Simplicity

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated”, a famous quote of Confucius in Successconciousness.com

There can never be more truth. Simplicity is the key to living a contented, fulfilling and meaningful life; a life well lived, one of quality instead of quantity. A simple life has a different meaning and a different value for every person. For me, it means eliminating all but the essential, abstaining from chaos for peace, and spending my time doing what is important to me. I might be here today and gone tomorrow, so why live a clustered and complicating life?
However, getting to simplicity isn’t always easy. It’s a journey, not a destination. It is a matter of exploring my inner self as part of the process of becoming whole. My journey through life has been partly rocky and partly smooth; each time I fell, I brushed the dust from my knees, picked myself up and learned to be more careful to walk the rest of the way, as stated by Frank A. Clark, “If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere”. I have no regrets in my life. I believe that everything happens to me for a reason. The difficult times I go through build my character, making me a much stronger person.

I always describe myself as “what you see is what you get”, devoid of pretenses, hypocrisies and deceits; everything I do, comes from the bottom of my heart, with no expectation nor tinted with any intention and ulterior motive: either I do it with passion and to the best of my ability, or not do it at all. I believe in myself, and my conscience is my guide. Simplicity doesn’t allow me to have a lackadaisical attitude, be irresponsible and non-committal.

My parents were the role models to all my siblings and me, they taught us what living a simple life was all about. Despite being illiterate and poor, my father was a simple and honest man – he didn’t lie; he didn’t cheat; he didn’t steal; he had no foes, instead he would mind his own business and worked hard to put food on the table for the eight of us. For that we will forever be grateful to him.

Simplicity is achieved when everything means something. It is about being appreciative and thankful, being grateful and looking at the glass half full instead of half empty; it is about giving, about an act of kindness and making a difference in somebody’s life. “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” (qtd. In Kelly 263).

To live a simple life is not to deny myself the things I want, but to free myself from the things that I don’t want, for wise men and women have found that the secret to happiness is not in getting more but in wanting less. I have learned to be content with the things I have that allow me to live my life with purpose. Those who have enough but not too much are those that are the happiest, for wealth is not measured by all the tangible things of a big house, a luxury car, a big screen TV, or a huge bank account; it is what inside the person that matters most of all. Because of our preoccupation with materialism we often miss the best things in life, which are free. To the world I may look poor because I am simple, but little do they know that I am really very rich in blessings which no amount of money could buy - health and happiness and inner peace.

I have discovered that living a simple life gives me the freedom and power to decide and to do what I truly want to do, thereby releasing me from the shackles of the “cycle” that most people are caught living in the first place.

You can’t force simplicity; but you can invite it in by finding as much richness as possible in the few things at hand. Simplicity doesn’t mean meagerness but rather a certain kind of richness, the fullness that appears when we stop stuffing the world with things (Moore, Thomas).