Simple life is not as mysterious as life

The idea that life is a mystery lures us into thinking that it can be solved, and solving it keeps us busy, stirring a vague sense of purpose in life. This cycle is self-sustained and amoral. It is a fabric, which if not tailored, gets used as a shroud. A simple life, however, is deliberate. It does not come and go; it exists in moments where things that matter engage our interest.

Sometimes we refer to life as a game, and roll our dices and play our turns to win relationships and promotions. Other times we see life as some puzzle and pray for answers to the riddles of sermons and political discussions. A simple life concerns itself with extracting knowledge that is spread across time, it does not discriminate between present and future. It takes us out of the maze by instructing us to not win but earn relationships and promotions.

Why associate this hard work with a simple life?

While covering a seminar on biopsy, I eavesdropped on a conversation between two doctors sitting next to me. Whispering, as though committing a crime, one said to the other, “It’s simple. Want to be healthy? Eat well and exercise. Want to feel better? Create a better work-life balance. Don’t want to die? Stop smoking cigarettes.” This is the essence of a simple life.

It is called simple because habits that form such a life are not hard to comprehend, but many simple qualities clubbed together give a simple life a complex appearance. We are not strangers to the fact that this simplicity for the greatest part rests in our imagination. Often the unknown overwhelms the known, and purpose adopts the quality of life and remains a mystery.

Considering purpose remains one of the significant quests of any life, living simply entails becoming more efficient at recognising what matters so either a purpose in life can be derived, or our actions can be tamed to create reasonable outcomes.

Present moment matters

In Hindu families a mother-to-be often spends last few months of her pregnancy, and months following childbirth at her mother’s house-it’s a tradition. So I was born in a house where my grandmother still lives. Located in one of the sunniest regions in India, the house required a dung smear every week or the walls and the floor grew uneven, revealing the hot earth, and people stumbled. Clay or cement was not an option. It was a home to 9 people (12, including me, my sister, and my mother, during summers), and stepping out felt hotter.

Everyone at home had something to keep them busy; my grandfather and uncles had the radio (except for the stories on the radio, there was never enough of what was needed), and the women remained in the kitchen with their little ones. One of my cousins, however, had her sewing machine. She was famed for her skills, and most believed that her being a seamstress would unfold a future better than the dung-smeared floor.

But her professed escape was not for the future. Through every moment on that sewing machine, she escaped the chaos she was born into, and transcended into one of her choice. “Time devoid of worry,” she called her experience. Under the mechanical rhythms of her sewing machine, the whines of ‘there’s not enough…’ grew weak, and having transcended she poured her skills into the craft. By recognising and doing what mattered to her, she emerged fulfilled from these moments. She worked in the present for her present, and not just for her future.

“Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Enduring misery in the present for hopes of better future is an expensive bet; it is a learned custom. Found in such a transaction, one often undervalues the present. And this transaction becomes harder to avoid, as our desires continue to grow, and turn us blind to their disservice.

Meddling in or pruning our to-do list is essential, and doing so demands reconsidering our needs and desires. But a simple life is not about disavowing thoughts of owning things; it is about freeing oneself from the dilemma of choices, and surrounding oneself with a better few. In the prologue of his book, The paradox of choice, Barry Schwartz opines, “I believe that we make the most of our freedoms by learning to make good choices about the things that matter, while at the same time unburdening ourselves from too much concern about the things that don’t.”

Quality of the choices we make

The outcomes of our expectations inform more expectations. But how aware are we about what is it that, from moment to moment; from one task to another, we expect? Do our choices that raise our comfort, luxuries, and status outweigh the choices that support our health and skills? Leisure and luxuries do a good job at highlighting status, not virtuosity.

If somehow we could believe that our skills can make a statement as famed as Nike Air Jordans, it would be easier to identify what matters and make good choices. Considering how they are seen in a community, our skills and Nike Air Jordans are ornaments; some find Jordans shinier than their skills, and make appropriate choices (Michael Jordan doesn’t fall in this group). If the quality of the choices we make remains unknown, the outcomes of these choices often birth expectations that don’t have our best interest at heart.

Since every choice we make cannot be inspected for its quality, being aware of ornaments we desire can result in outcomes that are deliberate and decisive. Chasing meaningful ornaments can mean making good choices.

The ideas that enable simple life flows through individuals into community or vice versa. Our collective interest can inspire our community to making certain choices. Statues, monuments, libraries, parks etc. are viewed and marketed as ornaments, before their utility can be justified. Mihály Csikszentmihályi, in his book, Flow, alludes:

“A community should be judged good not because it is technologically advanced, or swimming in material riches; it is good if it offers people a chance to enjoy as many aspects of their lives as possible, while allowing them to develop their potential in the pursuit of ever greater challenges.”

— Mihály Csikszentmihályi

A simple life aspires to bring reforms, individual and collective, but the knowledge of these reforms comes to us through living simply. And if details on reforms are primer to living simply, we can use our imagination to think about possible outcomes of making good choices or chasing a meaningful ornament.

Living simply doesn’t mean leading an ascetic life. One of the goals of a simple life is to reduce the fog around the quality of the available choices, which life creates through chance and randomness. While life catches attention of everything, meaningful and meaningless alike, a simple life’s pursuit of doing what matters is fixed and permanent.

Originally published at https://isflowing.com.