Simplicity

Sim­plic­ity move­ments have been around since the days of Dio­genes the Cynic (4th cen­tury BC). Rel­a­tively few went to his extremes — of only a cup to dip water and the clothes he was wear­ing. Jesus did not even carry a cup. Desert monks before and after Christ also went for the few essen­tials. Things take time. If you have a lot of things and expect to have some free time, make sure you have peo­ple to take care of those things. Find­ing time for soli­tude is harder than find­ing goods and services.

The sim­ple are always in style. They smile a lot. I read about a fam­ily that is quite wealthy. The wife has three nice out­fits (which includes “the lit­tle black dress”) and sev­eral pairs of jeans. That’s it! She dresses up or dresses casual — noth­ing in between. Some of the wealth­i­est men have three suits (Black, Navy, and Char­coal). Ele­gance and sim­plic­ity go hand in hand. If I had the money, I would live in a cathe­dral. I like space and long flow­ing lines. I also like ceil­ings beyond fifty feet with sky­lights and stained glass (sounds a lit­tle like where I work doesn’t it). Sim­plic­ity does not mean being taste­less. It cer­tainly does not mean being cheap.

I have stud­ied sim­plic­ity for many years. It is an indi­vid­ual thing with many styles. What I like about the study is that it helps you real­ize that things are just things — and are not to be com­pared to the higher qual­i­ties of life — like time. Things come and go. Time is a taste of the eter­nal. I have the best I can afford but the qual­ity is bal­anced against a higher trade­off. For me, I would rather have free­dom than secu­rity. I would rather freeze to death watch­ing a beau­ti­ful win­ter snow­storm than linger in a warm room painted insti­tu­tional eggshell — filled with peo­ple noises and elec­tronic bells and beepers.

Sim­ple thoughts are best — like lov­ing God, neigh­bor, and self (to sum­ma­rize one’s entire philo­soph­i­cal frame­work). “What I do is who I am” is one of my favorites too. Fig­ure out what you want and what you need. You do not owe any­one an apol­ogy or an expla­na­tion for your choices. Prac­tice sim­plic­ity as a daily dis­ci­pline and you will start notic­ing that you begin to have more time and money — as icing on a bet­ter cake.