The impulse frequently arises in me to squeeze
another this or another that into this moment.
Just this phone call, just stopping off here on my
way there. Never mind that it might be in the
opposite direction.
I've learned to identify this impulse and mistrust
it. I work hard at saying no to it. It
would have me eat breakfast with my eyes riveted to
the cereal box, reading for the hundredth time the
dietary contents of the contents, or the amazing
free offer from the company. This impulse
doesn't care what it feeds on, as long as it's
feeding. The newspaper is an even better draw,
or the L.L. Bean catalogue, or whatever else is
around. It scavenges to fill time, conspires
with my mind to keep me unconscious, lulled in a fog
of numbness to a certain extent, just enough to fill
or overfill my belly while I actually miss
breakfast. It has me unavailable to others at
those times, missing the play of light on the table,
the smells in the room, the energies of the moment,
including arguments and disputes, as we come
together before going our separate ways for the day.
I like to practice voluntary simplicity to counter
such impulses and make sure nourishment comes at a
deep level. It involves intentionally doing
only one thing at a time and making sure I am here
for it. Many occasions present
themselves: taking a walk, for instance, or
spending a few moments with the dog in which I am
really with the dog.
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Voluntary simplicity
means going fewer places in one day rather than
more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I
can do more, acquiring less so I can have
more. It all ties in.
It's not a real
option for me as a father of young children, a breadwinner, a
husband, an oldest son to my parents, a person who cares deeply
about his work to go off to one Walden Pond or another and sit
under a tree for a few years, listening to the grass grow and
the seasons change, much as the impulse beckons at times.
But within the organized chaos and complexity of family life and
work, with all their demands and responsibilities, frustrations
and unsurpassed gifts, there is ample opportunity for choosing
simplicity in small ways.
Slowing everything down is a big part of this. Telling my
mind and body to stay put with my daughter rather than answering
the phone, not reacting to inner impulses to call someone who
"needs calling" right in that moment, choosing not to
acquire new things on impulse, or even to automatically answer
the siren call of magazines or television or movies on the first
ring are all ways to simplify one's life a little. Others
are maybe just to sit for an evening and do nothing, or to read
a book, or go for a walk alone or with a child or with my wife,
to restack the woodpile or look at the moon, or feel the air on
my face under the trees, or go to sleep early.
I practice saying no to keep my life simple, and I find I never
do it enough. It's an arduous discipline all its own, and
well worth the effort. Yet it is also tricky. There
are needs and opportunities to which one must respond. A
commitment to simplicity in the midst of the world is a delicate
balancing act. It is always in need of retuning, further
inquiry, attention. But I find the notion of voluntary
simplicity keeps me mindful of what is important, of an ecology
of mind and body and world in which everything is interconnected
and every choice has far-reaching consequences. You don't
get to control it all. But choosing simplicity whenever
possible adds to life an element of deepest freedom which so
easily eludes us, and many opportunities to discover that less
may actually be more.
* * *
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say let your
affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand;
instead of a million count half a dozen. . . . In the midst of
this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and
storms and quicksands and the thousand-and-one items to be
allowed for, that a person has to live, if one would not founder
and go to the bottom and not make one's port at all, by dead
reckoning, and one must be a great calculator indeed who
succeeds. Simplify, simplify.
-Henry David Thoreau
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