Simple

“I’m really quite simple. I plant flowers and watch them grow… I stay at home and watch the river flow.”

The cuffs of my shirt are frayed.

It would be easy to 'click’ a new shirt, which would be delivered in hours, keeping this one for weekends of gardening and growing flowers, or walking by the river, but I’m starting to learn (again) that I don’t need so much stuff.

And I realise that I am digitally focusing myself too. I’m unsubscribing from lists and cancelling subscriptions, reading more deliberately and scrolling less, deleting apps. Deleting lots of things, actually.

I’m throwing stuff out, making space.

If lockdown has taught me anything it’s that my life has been needlessly complicated and I’ve frequently myself pondering Ellen Goodman’s fabulous words:

“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”

Even though I’m lucky to have been ‘WFH’ for a while now and have long avoided the worst excesses of the office/commuter/professional lifestyle, its legacy still crowds my world. And there is a point at which a frugal (‘save that, you might need it’) approach starts to fill a house with junk.

So I’m reducing the stuff coming into my life as well as getting rid of anything surplus to requirements.

It feels like an on-going inquiry into value and quality. The experiment is showing me how living with less frees me, spiritually and cognitively, to give attention to aspects of my life that are significantly more important to me.

Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus, ‘The Minimalists,’ speak about how minimalism requires the deep understanding that we were ‘born simple’ but that our modern, consumerist society has convinced us that we are incomplete without excess ‘stuff’ to make us feel safe and secure.

Which is a Faustian bargain; we know that our consumer behaviours are toxic and damaging. Not just for us but for all who live alongside us on our planet. Even our ‘net-zero’ principles will mean nothing if ‘civilisation’ subjugates and exploits others so that we might live comfortably.

Measuring the impact of humanity is a tricky business; but if everyone on our planet is to live at western levels of consumption, we will need about 4 Earths.

Yet, if we can settle for the simplicity of ‘enough’ we can all live comfortably within the generative capacity of our ecosystem.

We can each make a difference. Every day. The choice is both urgent and stark.

And I can live with frayed cuffs for a little longer.

Notes:

Some years ago I met a man (who seemed familiar) in a motorcycle race track bar. He spoke in soft scouse tones and was very knowledgeable about bike racing. We spoke about the machines, competitors and riding for an hour or so; he bought me a beer, we chatted some more and then he got up to leave, saying that it was rare for him to have a conversation like that. I realised I hadn’t asked his name, but one of my friends came over and asked how it had been to spend so much time with George Harrison.

The Minimalists have an appropriately simple mantra: “Love people, use things. Because the opposite never works.” Have a look at this short video and read through ‘Everything That Remains.’

I’ve been a fan of Leo Babauta’s ‘Zen Habits’ for several years. Have a look at his predictable straight forward post, 8 Key Lessons for Living a simple Life.

I often wonder if there is such a thing as a simple introduction to Zen, which is such a profound practice, but I’ve been enjoying ‘Zen: The Art of Simple Living’ by Shunmyō Masuno.