I was at a party last week, talking to people I’d never met before, which is something I always love to do. When I mentioned the word “simplicity” in reference to this blog, one woman asked me “How do you simplify your life?”
Good question!
It took a bit of scrambling (there’s a reason I’m a writer), but I think I managed to come up with something coherent. She looked quite interested in what I had to say, as did the woman sitting next to me. Her question, and the way the two of them listened to my reply has left me thinking that maybe there are others who want to know how to make life simpler.
I mean, there’s a ton of information out there, isn’t there? Entire sites devoted to uncluttering and organizing and cooking really simple dinners and being a minimalist and scaling back and cutting down. Taken head on, it can look a bit exhausting, like more stuff you need to add to your To Do list, which just makes your life more complicated, rather than less.
I lead a pretty simple life, all things considered. And sometimes I forget that I actually took steps to get here. I didn’t just luck into it. I read and questioned and tried things.
The first big step was this: I figured out what my priorities were. I mean, I sat down, I made a list of people and activities that caught my interest or my guilt and I wrote them down.
Then I sorted them by order of importance. In writing.
This can be a truly eye-opening experience. You look at the list when you’re done and if you’ve been really honest with yourself, it will look nothing like what your parents or your teachers or your church would tell it should look. It will be your list. It will be you, getting to know yourself, maybe for the first time in your life.
Maybe you don’t like what your priorities say about you. Maybe you want to put someone or something higher on the list. Maybe you forgot to put yourself on it at all. Well, now you know. You can start to think about making the changes you need to to get your life in line with who you want to be. You have a clearer picture of what you want more of in your life. You are so much closer to a simple life.
Just, please, while you’re doing this, be honest and gentle with yourself. It’s OK not to want to save the world. It’s OK if making a career out of that talent that everyone tells you is so special to you but that actually leaves you cold just isn’t on your list. It’s perfectly fine to want to be a little bit ordinary, or really, really special in ways no one suspected. It’s your list. Don’t let anyone else dictate what goes on it.
I really recommend this exercise if you’re interested in simplifying or whatever you want to call it when you build yourself a life that is really, truly yours.
Try making your list. And tomorrow I’ll tell you the second part of my answer.
And if you’d like to share what came up while doing this exercise, I always love reading your comments!
The Daily Photo: Door Number Two
Oh no, Barb. A list……
But cereally — with cream and maple syrup — now I definitely want you to come and talk to my students, once this gawdfersaken strike is over.
But..more buts…here’s a difficulty I often encounter. When I talk to people about simplicity, they immediately see sack cloth and a coal brasier reheating a pot of stone soup. The biggest hurdle is turning simple from a negative into a positive. When I try to explain that simple means right in that Buddhist noble truths meaning of right, they can’t get the image of scarcity out of their heads. And they turn away, turn off listening.
I think the richness of simple is the first hurdle…..
Oh, absolutely, Douglass!
On the one hand, people envy my free time, my ability to focus on writing and photography and my relationship with Alan. But when I try to tell them that simplifying is how I can do that they say “Yuck!” and then tell me how they won’t give up TV or wash dishes by hand. As though there’s only one path to a genuine life.
But it gives me lots to write about, doesn’t it?
And I would love to come and talk to your students. Just say when.
I’m very excited for part two of this answer!
Thanks, Douglass, for sharing wisdom from the noble truths!
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First point – Barb, I absolutely love your blogs – this one and the photo one – and I think I might have fallen a little bit in love with you and your hubby and your energy and community and life. But it’s ok. I’m not going to stalk you. In real life anyway. (lol – Celebrate the Atlantic!) And so onto my real points…
Ok… Douglass’s sack-cloth observation… and I used to be one of those that heard ‘simple’ as dull, austere etc… and I think you have hit the nail on the head in your response to that comment Barb. Freedom is my number one value. Fun’s also right up there. The moment I started seeing the freedom you refer to, hedonism even, in ‘simple’ and felt the lightness of not having too much stuff to weigh me down, hold me back, demand attention etc., the more appealing it became as an idea. Simple can be sexy, exciting, adventurous, abundant if you want it to be. (And/or sackcloth if that floats your boat.) So yeah, for me, simple is flying, soaring freedom, but for others I suspect that simple is more of whichever their no.1 value is. So perhaps the first hurdle is letting people know that simple is more map than territory. More style than substance. If you see what I mean.
And the other thing I wanted to share is to do with the not beating yourself up and being honest and gentle with yourself bits…
One of the things I found hardest was saying ‘no’ to people. I had friends who expected/demanded a lot of support from me when I wasn’t getting any myself, not even from myself. Some of those people went onto my first list, but never made it onto the priority list. Dealing with people and human relationships was the hardest part of my own simplification process.
I recently had a situation where a new aquaintance was trying to get me to commit to attending a regular Wednesday night event. She made a comment in company about how hard I was to ‘pin down’. As she said it, I balked slightly. I sounded like such a flake. And in that moment I realised WHY I can indeed be hard to pin down… like the movie says, I’m just “not that into” whatever I’m not committing to. I thought it would be a bit harsh to say so, but found myself saying – with a smile – “I simply have other priorities.” It felt so good, so freeing. Truthful and assertive without being rude.
A desire to not offend, to be pleasant, polite and helpful and an inability to assert can all too easily result in complicated lives when we really wanted simple.
Have subscribed to your feed, so look forward to next post
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Thanks so much Claire! We’re going to have some really interesting discussions here, I can tell.
I love the phrase “simple is more map than territory”. And I have much more to say about simplicity, so thank you!
And, yes, simplifying stuff is actually the easy bit. The people thing can get really complicated. But sometimes that complication can be part of the simplicity, if that makes sense. As in “I’m consciously allowing you to complicate my life because you are so important to me that I’m willing to allow the chaos for this time that you need me to.”
It’s important to know who gets to do that and who you kindly turn down.
Looking forward to lots more discussions!
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