I know that in order to survive, we do require time, activity and materials. However, it requires even more foresight, planning, imagination, creativity, and just plain mulishness to learn to live simply.
We are attracted to the colorful maze of materialism. Material items we acquire accumulate in piles, get lost in storage boxes, spill out of desk drawers, clog dressers, jam closets, teeter in uneasy stacks on counter-tops and drift about in drips and drabs. They ultimately end up in a land fill further eroding our planet.
Similarly, we also are dazzled with many daily activities which add little to the quality of our lives and result in addled brains, hyperactivity and shortened attention spans. They include, for example, watching several television screens while simultaneously intensively roaming a multitude of social media internet sites, commuting in heavy traffic while talking on the phone and texting, exercising at a gym while listening to or watching the news and the like. Under such conditions, our abilities to listen and learn are badly hampered.
Finding out who we are after we strip ourselves of unnecessary material items, obligations and useless hyper-activities, takes time, energy and planning. It can result in some wonderful surprises.
I no longer expect to arrive at a place called “full simplicity” especially since I am not even certain what that would mean. But I intend to continue on this most interesting journey aimed at simple living while still locating myself smack dab in the middle of our complicated, demanding world.
marysgardens 