The Difficulty in being Simple

‘I want to live simply. To sit by the window when it rains and read books I’ll never be tested on. I want to paint because I want to, not because I have got something to prove. I want to listen to my body, fall asleep when the moon is high and wake up slowly with no place to rush off to. I want not to be governed by money or clocks or any of the artificial restraints that humanity imposes on itself. I just want to be, boundless and infinite.’

This is a Facebook post which seems to be popular these days because shares and likes it is garnering. Almost everyone who comments – and there are many – agrees that this is bliss; almost everyone who comments also agrees that it is something to aspire for, implying that their lives today are distant from it.

There are two ways we can lead our life; either living with the hope of living a dream life in the future, or living that dream life now. Every single day we live with the first option is one day less we will live with the second.

What really stops us from living that dream life, the paragraph so lucidly illustrates, today? What makes it sound so unattainable, at least in the foreseeable future?

Let us for a moment challenge this notion and believe that we could start living this life from now – if we want. Is it difficult?

How difficult is it to pick up a book that we have always wanted to read and sit down to read when we feel like it? Not at all. What prevents us is our own notion of how important my current task is? Of how things will be difficult if I am not there to do them – if I don’t reply to a mail or don’t respond to a whats-app message or don’t check for my facebook updates. It may be as much to do with my own sense of security – about how important I am – as much as how important the task is.

How difficult is it to follow a hobby simply because I want to and not to prove to the world? Not at all, provided I have a hobby. Blessed are the ones who know what they truly like for then they know what to do when they have time. The others will end up watching television or playing games on their mobiles or some such thing.

The more difficult thing is the desire to prove to the world. I struggle with it every day. And facebook and twitter make their millions because of this. Success is only of value when it is visible and we measure our success on how successful the world feels we are. And thus the need for pretense and demonstration and the huge amount of time and effort it takes to preserve it.

How much effort we spend making presentations to glorify what are otherwise regular tasks? Was that not effort and time that could have been better spent cultivating a habit, reading a book you have always wanted to read?

How difficult is it to not be in a hurry, to wake up slowly with no place to rush off to? This is difficult because we have expectations to meet – expectations set by society, by family and by our own measures of our success - and they are many; a house in a premium complex, a vacation at an exotic place, the latest digital device. And we are in a great hurry to meet them because it is archaic to work for ten years to afford a large house and out-dated to be seen with a phone that is not latest.

Is it surprising then that most of the front page newspapers advertisements are about residential properties and latest smart phones available with discount schemes that seek exorbitant money in the guise of easy installments and low up-front payments?

And when I have many such easy installments to pay for many years to come how can I not to be governed by money or clocks or any of the artificial restraints that humanity imposes on itself – for the truth is there are no restraints that humanity imposes, but the restraints I have imposed on myself because I measure my success on how the world views it rather than how I view it. Because probably I don’t even have a definition of individual success, only a definition of failure.

Hence I write to become a best-selling author and not just because I enjoy the creative process of providing an experience. And thus happiness to me will come only when I get published and feature in the top 10 on Amazon and not in that beautiful feeling of contentment when I write a sentence which I myself enjoy to read repeatedly.

I just want to be boundless and infinite. The fact is we are or we are designed by nature to be, because nature in itself is boundless and infinite. Somewhere in our pursuits we have allowed ourselves and society to put limitations on us.

Being boundless and infinite doesn’t mean being able to do whatever I want whenever I want. It means knowing what I truly want and having the belief that if I apply myself to it, it is possible to achieve, that nature will help me to achieve.

The important thing is knowing what I want, and for that it is important to listen to my body, because my body is telling me that all the time and I keep telling it that I will follow it once I finish this one task, meet this one deadline. In a technologically advanced age, it is easy to stay connected with the world. Yet it is equally, if not more important to connect with the self and for that you sometimes need to disconnect with the world.

It is not wrong to want a house in a premium complex or aspire to be a best-selling author, what goes wrong is when I make that as a condition for my success and happiness; while my inner core finds satisfaction in spending more time with family or expressing myself.

And thus ironically, in my striving for seeming happiness I sacrifice that which actually provides happiness to me.

‘I want to live simply.’

That is how the paragraph opens and it is not without a reason. For if one was to do that, everything that follows would follow. It is the essence of the entire passage, the foundation on which the other states are built.

And no one can decide that for yourself except you. It is that simple.

Difficult?