Greetings. It was several days ago that we left the opening post on The Power of Less. I appreciate your interest and contacts and have been pouring through the article from Real Simple to draw forth several angles which seem to fit into the culture I live in here in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.
You may recall that I had taken a swipe at suggesting we are all given to the practice of distraction. There are a lot of reasons to blame for our pursuing distractions, especially those which call us away from the pursuit of simplicity. Distraction is antithetical to Simplicity or anything else we pursue that is helpful when living life. Stop for a moment here to identify two or three juicy distractions in your own life. Got um? Okay, here’s the thing.
Distractions consume most Americans and while many may not admit to that statement, take a listen to Dr. Randy Paterson from his book;
How To Be Miserable. “We are fueled by this impulse to overcommit so much that we get together and talk about how busy we are!” That statement, set by itself, is hilarious even though it is also pathetic. I know this first hand, or, maybe I should say; second hand as my wife Lynda, at some point not long ago began protesting against my busy schedule by saying, “I don’t need to see your schedule to know you’re busy.” I’ll get back to where that ended up in another blog post
Distraction of course, draws us toward the insignificant at the expense of the significant. And the insignificance, once given enough of one’s time, will run us head on into Indifference.
There are about seven definitions for indifference. They run from apathetic to neutral. I mean, I can be neutral about two shirts I’m thinking about purchasing because that is insignificant. However, if I am all in on the Power of Less, I can’t appeal to neutrality. I’m either in or I’m not. And by the way, deconstructing pieces and parts of your current life, will in fact, always be challenged by someone or something else clamoring for your time. Psychologist Beth Kurland; “It’s as if each of us has a container within us that can only hold so much…..How full is my container?” Well that’sthe question isn’t it?
Toward the conclusion of Part I of this post on The Power Of Less, I noted that the title itself; “Almost sounds Biblical doesn’t it?” For me it does and I locate that feeling from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew chapters five through seven. You should take a couple of minutes now to read chapter 6:19-33. Jesus goes on a riff about a number of things you and I seem to be worried about. Things like: food, and fashion, and fitness, and finances, and the future. What would an itinerant sojourner from two thousand years ago know about those things then? Take a couple of minutes now and read his thoughts in Matthew 6:19-33 on the matter of simplicity.
The Power Of Less isn’t merely about cleaning out a bedroom closet or a kitchen pantry on the road to simplicity. You and I are far more complex than that. You and I are Mind, Body, Soul, and Spirit. The Power Of Less may begin with some changes in our current environment but as we contemplate that simple act, the heart of the matter works to pull us deeper into something more significant, more meaning filled, nothing less than The Power Of Life itself.
Hey, next time, let’s continue to have a conversation that has the depth to change each of us. Talk Ain’t Cheap!
Thanks for taking the time to read this post. Leave a comment and let’s start a connection with one another.
MC
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