The Gift of Simplicity

I thought of the merry-go-round we used to ride as children, and how we enjoyed the spin and the changing view. If someone increased the speed too much, however, everything became a blur. Like the child on this merry-go-round, we had to give all our attention just to hanging on. It really wasn’t fun anymore, and how some of us longed to get off.

Clearly, for so many of us, life has become a blur. We have to give too much attention just to hanging on. We have crammed our lives with constant action: We work long hours to meet our numerous obligations, pay our debts, and climb the ladder to success. We volunteer, belong to numerous organizations, attend various functions, meetings, and events. We take care of our personal lives and our families, and shuttle our children to soccer, ballet, little league, and more. Whether employed full-time, or not, we rush headlong from one activity to another, compulsively filling every minute. We complain that we have no time, but often we have chosen to have no free time.

Caught in a stream of endless demands and activities, we seem to have lost the capacity to say No. Both men and women report feeling caught in this frenzied pace. Young parents, middle-aged people, a few who have recently left college, and some approaching, or living in retirement speak of their desire to slow this dizzying spin. We have not found the happiness we seek on the whirling merry-go-round, and many report feelings of emptiness and lack of fulfillment. We are ready to discover how less can be liberating in so many ways.

How are you spending your time? Do you know? If life is such a frantic blur that you don’t know where the time goes, follow this variation of Richard Foster’s suggestion, and perform Exercises 6- 1 and 6- 2 to help you see how to change that.

Evaluate the amount of time you spend in your work, and decide if it is consuming too much of your life. As you simplify your life and reduce your desires, you may be able to reduce your working hours. Next, give careful consideration to all new requests for your time, and be conscious of how you are choosing to spend it. You can learn to say No as well as Yes. Explain that you have another commitment, even if that commitment is to yourself and your need for some precious time alone. Unfortunately, this is often given the lowest priority. Yet, as Harriet Braiker, a stress researcher, notes, "Chronic overstimulation taxes the body’s physiological system, and results in fatigue, debilitation and depletion of the immune system. Stress contributes to, or causes, just about any disease or illness."

The effects of solitude and inner silence are just the opposite. Enjoy periods of silence by refraining from habitually turning on your television, radio, or stereo. When our senses are constantly overstimulated, they become numbed and dull. We require increasing levels of sound to catch and hold our attention, or to help us feel alive. It is the contrast--sound and silence, activity and rest, work and leisure, companionship and solitude--which enhances our pleasure in each of these experiences.