"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak." –Hans Hofmann
I've been trying to get a grasp on the simple life for a long time. It sounds appealing, and it sounds right, doesn't it? But simplicity is hard. It means saying no more often—even to "good" projects. And then it means not frittering away newfound time after saying no. As Hofmann said above, simplicity is paring down in order to have more time in which to appreciate that which remains.
I don't know if it's harder now than ever to embrace a more simple life, but I suspect it is. Any topic we're interested in has more than enough coverage. Even if a cable channel isn't already dedicated to it, then dozens of websites, magazines, newspapers, e-newsletters, blogs, and internet communities are.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) didn't have nearly as much noise to contend with in his day, but he still took two years out of his life to build a cabin on Walden Pond outside of Concord, Massachusetts to "live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and…learn what it had to teach." He wrote a book about his experience that was published in 1854 called Walden; Or, Life in the Woods.
I don't think pulling away from real life for two years should be the norm, but I can certainly understand why Thoreau did it. People and things beg for our attention and it's quite easy to oblige. So easy in fact, that sometimes it's hard to know when we're indulging and when we're not. We just participate. I sure do.
So, every year about this time, I start unsubscribing to many of the e-newsletters that I signed up for throughout the previous year. I let subscriptions to magazines and newspapers lapse if I don't read them. And I pull out of projects, classes, groups, or studies that are taking up time that might be better spent elsewhere.
I don't think I'll ever really find the ideal simple life, but I'd be thrilled to find a simpler life.
