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Looking for a pathway to simplicity

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There are 20 self-storage facilities in Las Cruces. My garage is full and most of the wall space is used up in the house. It’s a serious problem, and not only for me. Many of us have more possessions than we can adequately store, and they turn on us! 

Eventually they possess us; we don’t possess them. We live with complexity and not with simplicity. We are a nation of gatherers, which goes against the tug of simplicity. It’s a predicament.  How did we get here?

Henry David Thoreau sought simplicity and thus he thought many products were unnecessary and eventually burdensome. More clutter in a life already cluttered – even in the Nineteenth Century. “No labor-saving device in the history of mankind ever saved anyone any labor,” said Thoreau with, I think, a wink in his eye.

Another sage notion about clutter was that “every degree of luxury has a connection with unnecessary labor,” so the Quaker sage John Woolman. Woolman was seeking simplicity in personal dress. I have known people with closets stuffed with more clothes than you can dream of, but they were stuck with the obvious problem of which to choose on any given occasion.  When you spend so much time, let alone money, on figuring out what to wear, you are going to lose any simplicity.

There is a social concern with clothing; think about the people who produce the goods we wear on our heads, bodies, and feet. Are these people amply compensated for their labor? Do they have a good quality of life? Are their workplaces safe, clean, and protected? Questions like these come to mind if you are committed to an informed simplicity that takes into consideration the needs of others.

The search for simplicity includes opposition. If you choose the value of simplicity in your life, you are automatically opting out of greed and excess on any and every plane of life. Simplicity leads to spaciousness. As we simplify in various ways, we gain more inner and probably also more outer space to include others in our lives. We are not, to use the phrase, so full of ourselves that we have no room for others’ opinions, values, insights and hopes. 

My first great love in high school and beyond was a girl whose parents were teachers. They lived in an ordinary house in an ordinary neighborhood, as did I, but there was something different about their home and, noticeably, their lives. They chose to live rather sparsely. It was a choice and not an imposition, that was clear. The parents seemed to listen to each other and to my girlfriend, their daughter. There was a palpable depth to their simplicity. It was not for show, nor was it a veneer pasted over their usual behavior. They proved that simplicity is not a mask for superficiality nor a cover for mediocrity. 

Simplicity in speech means you don't tell lies, that you speak plainly and that you “let your yes be yes and your no be no” as we read in the Epistle of James in the New Testament, which is a repeat of a saying from Jesus. Simplicity is, in short, opposed to duplicity in speech as well as in other areas of life.

Simplicity is marked by a singular approach to life, in which clutter, whether mental or material, has been cleared. Such singularity is possible only by virtue of a focused and reflective mind and heart.  With this awareness and realization, we are driven inward, to look within ourselves to see if we are free enough to be simple. 

   Fr. Gabriel Rochelle is a retired Orthodox Christian priest. Contact him at gabrielcroch@aol.com.


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