These words from Thoreau’s Walden have become a rallying cry for many people since his book gained popularity. Movements have come and gone as people found it hard to deal with complexities piled on top of complexities brought on by modern life. Not to put too fine a point on it, but premodern life could be pretty stressful in its own way, which might explain why many of the philosophical underpinnings today’s simplicity movements were formulated in pre-industrial societies. So the need to simplify is hardly a result of modern consumerism or the industrial revolution. Those recent development have simply made simplicity more attractive, and urgent.
Simplicity is not simple, and it is not easy. You can do it, and it can have a remarkably exhilarating effect on your life. But there’s a catch. That catch is that the process forces you to examine your life in close detail and commit to some priorities, decide what exactly you want and maybe even confront the question of who you are. This can lead to some interesting conversations with yourself.
But the process can be cathartic and sometimes enthralling. Getting rid of excess things or organizing your stuff gives you a feeling of control and definition. It can take awhile; I’ve been reducing my personal possessions for years, even though I have also acquired other things meanwhile. The trick, in my view, is not to just purge things willy-nilly, but make careful deliberative choices about what you really want to surround yourself with (part of Thoreau’s “living deliberately”). And this, I think, is where it’s easy to get confused. Reduction in stuff does not necessarily equal simplicity. If a carpenter opted to simplify, getting rid of his tools would not simplify his life–unless he no longer wanted to do carpentry.
But most of the time, refining, streamlining your life does consist of losing things that no longer make sense in your life. Remember that you, me, everyone has bought a lot of things that we really didn’t need because of how our culture’s prowess at advertising.
So here is an exercise. Pick a shelf, tabletop, a corner of a room or just a drawer that is full of stuff. Put it all into a single pile. Then sort that pile into three smaller piles. One pile is what you will throw away. A second is that you will donate or sell, and the third is what you decide to keep. Enjoy the liberating, cleansed feeling you will get when you look at your area, purged of the non-essential, arranged in an orderly way. If you like how that felt, pick another spot to do tomorrow–you don’t need to do it all at once.
