Life Design Action: Live With Simplicity

Requires: Lack of complexity

Does not require: Toothpaste, cement mixers or spaghetti (hoops, basics, bigoli, fuscilli, spaghettini …)

We live in a world of skyscraper complexity.

Even choosing which toothpaste to buy can be a matter of intense decision making. Do we go for gleamy white pearls? Extra protection? Organic tea-tree and camomile? And lets not even get onto the vast array of toothbrushes … Or spaghetti.

When simple matters like dental hygiene and pasta has become a labyrinth of mental gridlock there is little hope for the rest of life being straight forward. There is also no real surprise that most Western brains resemble barrels of twirling spaghetti. For those of us with creative leanings/ and or in the pursuit of living outside of the realms of usual possibility that barrel is a cement mixer.

Throw into that some high stress life event such as a wedding, divorce or new baby being born, the cement mixer becomes an industrial truck with a slow, spinning, crunching back bit (that I can’t think of the word for because I’m too tired) of spaghetti and various other tangled items.

Like wool.

Occasionally we realise that we have become completely tangled up in life’s complexity and at these times, I believe, the key is to simplify. Strip back. Return to the bones. We need to let go of the spaghetti and make a return to (or at least remind ourselves of) life’s beautiful simplicity.

 In his book Walden; or A Life In The Woods, Henry David Thoreau takes the reader through his journey into living with simplicity. Instead of being pulled into society’s complex expectations, he took himself off and lived just off what he needed to survive.

Until Ads builds me my summer house, I’m not sure that living alone in a wooden shed is going to be a viable method of simplification. Instead I am taking myself on lots of walks and making a big effort not to think too much.

Or have too many ideas.

(I have had to have a word with my influx of ideas and explain that now I am a new mum I’m not quite in the same position to entertain them. The ideas need to sort their demands out, I think. Either muck in and help or back off until I have more time on my hands.)

Instead of manifesting I am focusing on

Listening

and

Looking.

These are some of the simple gems I have found along the way:

 (Whilst travelling in his pram with the hood down).

And …

He was very lovely. He was lying belly down in the chalk!

I love seeing creative people in their own worlds, creating … It gives me a little rush of inspiration by proxy.

At one point I wanted to join in, but then I just sat and listened …

The tiny amber and chocolate brown spider was my favourite gem.

So simple.

But very beautiful.

Today I’m going to take another walk through simplicity (though it looks quite drizzly so I reckon the artist and the photographer may not be about).

I task you to do the same.

If you see a mother pushing a pram (with the same stagger as one of the more docile zombies from Resident Evil), that’ll be me.

Sleep deprived and keeping it simple.  xx