One of my favorite things to do online is to
read blogs by everyday Joes and Jill's. I'm even more keen on this, having joined the
blogger tribe more than a year ago. It's
fun to be part of a conversation and read what people say and how they say it,
and view their web designs. Blogs have
frequently given me good advice and sparked new creativity. Best, they've linked me to others with
similar needs and wants, dreams and fears, as questing, yet fallible, beings in
life's journey.
This morning, my daughter sent me a link to a
blog I found just fascinating. www.theminimalists.com More than
100,000 subscribers apparently agree.
It's the work of two young men with writing finesse. You get the feeling they're sitting across
the table, talking to you. I started
reading their posts this morning and became this greedy kid with his fingers in
the cookie jar, devouring one post after another,
Minimalists, they share a passion for getting
down to life's marrow. They've done this
in their own lives, downsizing their living quarters, forfeiting television,
that great time mugger. Courageous, they quit their six figure salary positions
in the corporate world to live independently, sustaining themselves through
their own resourcefulness. Not many of
us enjoy their liberating lifestyle; instead, we often endure life with anxiety
riding our backs.
It's like Walden all over again--you
know, the hut in the wilderness experience Thoreau undertook to redefine the
good life. (That guy has to be one of my
all time favorites.) I like the way he
put the matter of simplicity: "Our life
is fritted away with detail. Simplify,
simplify.”
Yet simplifying doesn’t come easily to me. I don't know about you, but I cling to
memories and am obsessed with routine. I
collect junk. I hate throwing things
out. I don't like change. Yeah, the jig
is up: I confess to being a sentimentalist junkie.
I know some people don't seem to have
difficulty tossing out past memories or replacing old friends, or moving to new
climes. But I've always been different
that way. When I was a child, I’d
frequently make myself scarce to avoid saying good-bye to those I loved. Silly, I even hated giving up my worn out
shoes, friends who'd been with me everywhere.
I remain that way about a lot of things, cluttering my life with the
inconsequential.
Still, I'm beginning to do better in lightening
the load. Take the mail for instance.
For too long I've been in the habit of creating disheveled piles on any
available surface in the house. Now I
sort the mail immediately, sometimes on my way walking up the drive, separating
the wheat from the chaff.
I know it doesn't amount to real
simplification, but it does indicate my awareness I need to learn how to let
go.
In a way, the life Karen and I live is already
simple. Finances make that the only real
option. I’m retired and my wife soon will be. We live in an older house of modest square
footage. We don't purchase frills, or things we don't need. We seldom get out of
town.
Right now, I'm thinking about shedding my many
books I've gathered over the years as a prof. This
isn't as easy as it may seem. I'm a
lover of books. But I'm also more aware
I need to give to others what I no longer require. I haven't looked at most of these books in a
very long time anyway.
Elise Boulding, the renowned sociologist, put the whole thing
succinctly: “The consumer society has made
us feel that happiness lies in having things and has failed to teach us the
happiness of not having things.”
Like my worn out shoes, it's time to let
go. Time to simplify.
