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Today's
quotation:
You were trying to be simple for the sake of
being simple. I wonder if
true simplicity is ever anything but a by-product. If we aim directly for it, it eludes us; but if we are on fire
with
some great interest that absorbs our lives to the uttermost,
we
forget ourselves into simplicity.
Everything falls into
simple lines around us, like a worn
garment.
David Grayson
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Today's
Meditation:
There
are those who claim that a return to simplicity is a
challenging task, and I tend to agree with them. Returning to a
simple lifestyle can be very difficult, especially given
the amount of conditioning that we've been exposed to that
has tried to convince us to complicate our lives at each
step.
But
a lack of simplicity-- a lack of an ability to get by
without the most basic of things in our lives-- often
arises from people having too much time on their
hands. If we don't have something to do that we feel
is important, we look for other things to keep us
occupied, entertained, and amused. It's easier that
way, as the more complicated our lives are, the less
likely we are to examine ourselves and our lives to see
how we are truly doing. We don't have to reflect if
we have to spend all our time maintaining our things.
I've
traveled to Spain for six weeks for each of the last five
years, and during that time I get by on the clothes and
other things that I can carry in a large backpack.
The job is very intense and it keeps me very busy; I don't
need anything else to get by, and I truly enjoy my time
there. If the time were extended to three years, for
example, there's no reason to think that I couldn't
continue to get by with the same amount of stuff, just
replacing clothes as they wore out.
But
the reality is that after three years, I most likely would
have complicated my life significantly by acquiring more
and more things that I "need," even though that
word is truly relative-- we "need" almost none of
the things that we have.
If
I continued to be as busy for those three years, though,
as I am for the six weeks, the chances are that I would
have less time to go about complicating my life, and I
probably would continue to live as simply as I could.
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