Should We All Choose a Simple Life?
Many of us in our hectic societies long to live a simple life, but not everyone is attracted to simplicity. Some people prefer wildness and passion, the frenetic dashing from here to there, the unexpected marvels of unknown lands. The young especially enjoy the thrill of adventure and the promise of power, though some of us never outgrow our grasping for the glittering things of the world.
Others of us love chaos. Some people choose to have many children. Then they encourage their children’s friends to join them, preferring the noise of the horde over the anxiety of wondering where their children are. Adult neighbors may wander in for coffee. Elders might be part of the household, needing tending and support. In such homes, a person’s days will be filled with vitality and purpose. It can feel very satisfying.
Even if not appreciated, such a lifestyle may be accepted as part of what it means to be a human being who lives in community, part of what it means to love and be loved. In the face of such chaos, ought simplicity to be a goal?
What Is a Simple Life?
Of course, we have not defined what we mean by a simple life. Does it require a retreat in the country, days expansive enough to contain prayer and meditation? What roles do screens—televisions, computers, video games—play in the simple life?
Perhaps simplicity is the capacity to live with each moment as it arises, experiencing one thing at a time, no matter how many sensations compete for our attention. Could it be one thing for one person; another for another? Or is simplicity just another name for mindfulness? Do we live a simple life if we remain grounded in each moment, neither pushing any of it away, nor clinging to it?
If that is so, then rushing through our days mindlessly will not serve. We will miss the sacred contours of bowed heads, the shimmering fragility of tears, the wrenching loneliness of vistas that resonate with the swell of eternity. Again, though, not everyone wants that. Many people would choose the glitter, the grasping, the escape. If the simple life means calming down or accepting the road as the road, not everyone wants it.
If a way out of our misery exists, who would not choose it? Some might say that way is mindfulness or quiet kindness or the renunciation of worldly pleasures, but is the simple life the only way? Besides, if simplicity is one way to become free if suffering, it can also be an escape, a fearful withdrawal from the world. Yet within every peace, terror and uncertainty lurk. The world can intrude on even the fiercest fortress.
How Freely Do We Choose?
Besides, we don’t get to decide what kind of life we live. Not fully. I suppose it’s possible that in some pre-human haze, we chose our bodies, our parents, the town of our birth, but I think it more likely that we get what we get, with the predilections, the upbringing, the influences that makes us who we are.
We might relish taking risks, or maybe we’d rather hide in the shadows. Some hearts beat with relentless fervor, while others settle into complacency. Also, if we land in the midst of poverty and oppression, the simple life will be harder to maintain. Money insulates us from the tireless slog of tasks we’d rather forgo. Wealth and power offer us more choices.
So if some people seem to reject simplicity, perhaps it’s less a rejection than a condition. We do not have endless free will.
The Lure of the Simple Life
At a certain point, for me and for many elders I speak with, the idea of simplicity does, eventually, appeal. Perhaps when we’re tired enough, or old enough, or successful enough, we feel ready to slough off what is not needed and sink into stillness. Though we must wake, at times, to the sting of sleet against our window pane and the aching of weary joints, we might find that a measured response to time and breath eases sorrow and mitigates pain. We can learn to desire what is in front of us, and no more. Is simplicity not the capacity to allow the moments of our days to drift past as they will, inviting them to be wholly what they are and no more?
Why not, then, let go of the complications of this and that, of our attempts to make the world in our image? Do we really want everyone else to be like us? Besides, no matter how hard we push it, the world will not change, at least not for us. It will shift and evolve, of course, but only because nothing lasts forever as it is. Time changes nature, society, and it changes us, which is why we might disdain the simple life at one period of our existence, only to seek it out later.
Journeying Toward Simplicity
So maybe simplicity is simply the settling into such wisdom, allowing change and not-change to flow through and around us without trying to hold onto to something that will not be chained. Let go. Love what is. Hold what must be held, then release it.
Trying to force life to be what we want, or think we want, wears us out. Yet some of us are born with so much energy, we must expend it or explode, and serenity is too quiet to suit. Others, it seems, have been given a responsibility as wide as the sun, and simplicity is like the holy grail, indefinable and unreachable.
Yet for those of us who long for simplicity, and those who can release the wildness before we are dispossessed of all that keeps us upright and solvent, a life of quietude and peace does await. If our simplicity is disrupted at times, we can find equilibrium again. Surely, there is a path to get us there.
But, of course, the simple path is deceptively simple. As we journey along it, we will regularly discover we have strayed. We might trip over paving stones or wander into the wilderness, though that could be part of the journey.
So open your heart to whatever is yours, and you will find your way to where you need to be. Perhaps simplicity is found in the rightness that settles upon us when we become our true selves, live as we were meant to live, whether that living is chaotic and crazy or quiet and still. Choose life, whatever that looks like. Such a simple thing, but, oh, so hard.
In faith and fondness,
Barbara
Credits
Photo by Keegan Houser on Unsplash
Copyright © 2022 Barbara E. Stevens. All Rights Reserved.