In the winter of 2001 I was flung into a new life. The attack on the World Trade Center was yet months away. I was a newly-made single man, living alone on the outskirts of a very big city with few to connect to and little to connect with. I worked a swing shift and commuted an hour by bus into downtown Seattle. The route home each evening was dreary and lonely, made all the more dreadful by the anticipation of even more dreary loneliness awaiting me at home. I didn’t care much for my life but I did struggle to improve it, and my perspective, as best I could, from scratch.
The one light during this time was the Internet, access to which, for the first time in my life, was all-my-own-alone.
Part of my efforts involved a great deal of thinking, thinking about the notion of Simplicity. Like Pirsig’s pursuit of Quality in ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE, I was seeking Simplicity. I imagine there wasn’t a great deal of difference in that which I was seeking to subsume and Pirsig, it was really just semantics. I thought a lot about how I could shape this new life of mine into something better, something stronger, but I had no one in my immediate airspace with whom to connect, to resonate.
Always seeking some level of connection, I polled all the folks on my email list, asking them to define for me, in their own terms, the notion of Simplicity.
Responses to my inquiry were fair to middling. After reading them over, I dropped them into a file in my yahoo mail account, and there they sat for over eight years. But they were never entirely forgotten. Some are so frighteningly profound they still evoke an intense emotional response in me even now. I believe the response so deep because I have the honor of knowing the person from whom it was formed.
In this age, information is the greatest of commodities, it is the stuff of our lives…but unlike material stuff we can accumulate and horde and squirrel away out of sight, digital information does not gather dust. Had it that capacity, I may just have taken the time to lug these responses into the light and “dust” them off sooner.
Such is life, when it is not as simple as one would wish.
I’m finally sharing these responses, and I’ll leave names in place until I am requested to do otherwise. It was sad to realize just how many of these folks have dropped from my radar, or vice versa. In retrospect, there is a dearth of responses here, something which surprised me in re-reading them after all of these years. Perhaps I don’t think and ask the same questions as my peers, perhaps I ask them too soon, or too late.
But it all, ultimately, begs the question; is my life any simpler now than it was then? I if say ‘yes,’ I fear I will be lying, and if I say, ‘no,’ I fear the response more negative than is factual. Not a particularly simple answer, now was it? But I will say that I am closer than I have ever been before because, frankly, I quit making it a conscious concern to pursue that which is Simple several years back. I believe now, instead of thinking, I began to work on doing…
…or I could just be blowing a lot of smoke.
It did occur to me that another such poll is in the offing; times have changed, the original respondents have changed…and now I keep this blog, and this is such and ideal filler.
Oh, and any insights you may wish to share are always welcome.
Please read on.
Simplicity is…
"Complexity that no longer worries. Peace of mind is simple, but it's reached through many worries first. Decide what you will do, don't rush the decision, and do it. If the course is wrong, lather, rinse, and repeat.
Consider that the elegance of Shaker furniture took a lot of consideration."
-Gene Ha
"Simplicity is the art of making the least possible more than enough."
-Professor Jack Watson
"Simplicity is.... an answer "yes" or "no".
Simplicity is...a lie of the "white" variety
Simplicity is...pantheism
Simplicity is...doing what feels right
Simplicity is...a shirt devoid of marketing
Simplicity is...a cirrus cloud at dusk"
-Douglas Hayko
"Simplicity:
Not letting what you THINK you want
Get in the way of what you really need."
-Rocco Lieuallen
"Simplicity: Trusting that God will guide me to glorify Him in all things I do. Anything else doesn't matter, really."
-Joseph Butler
"Simplicity…A lack of chaos and confusion (and my personal goal)."
-Susan Paige-Giberson
"Simplicity...
--Balance, as in the Tao
--Efficiency and elegance
--Occam's Razor"
-Kevin Smith
"Simplicity is
A striving for contentment, if you will, for what I have. Not a longing for things I don't have and don't need. Breaking down into something’s basic parts - what is needed?"
-Traci Smith
"The first thing that comes to my mind is the road that I live on. There are no lines on the road. There are only 3 farms on the road...2 dairy farms and my horse "ranch." It is the kind of road that if someone drives by, you stop what you are doing to wave. The majority of the traffic is from tractors. (Although if one vehicle goes by an hour it must be rush hour!) I don't lock my door, EVER! I leave my keys in my vehicles-and don't lock the doors-all the time, my vehicles are parked outside. It is a simple road; it makes part of my life simple, calm, serene and happy."
-Marsha Vine
"Uncomplicated, requiring few steps and not
difficult to follow. This word in particular brings to mind the Simplicity patterns for sewing, which are designed for anyone to use. You don't have to be a professional for it to come out correct."
-Laura Poor
"Explaining something so that a child could understand."
-Melissa McKee
"Simplicity is the opposite pole of complexity - it forms a dynamic balance and whole with complexity, the relaxation phase as counterpoise to the action phase. It is the inward breath - taking in preparation for the out-going breath - putting out."
-Thea Rowe
"Simplicity is the most basic and organic way in which to react to or create an idea or circumstance.
I will leave you with this on line answer, thus keeping it simple."
-Cynthia Bestemen
"Unadorned perfection."
-Sarah Engler-Young
"When I do not have to analyze something to find the meaning behind it."
-Courtney DiMartino
"Simplicity is bare-bones living. Easier and less fraught with worry than Complexity."
-Heather Ronai
"Freedom."
-Kelly Warren
"The absence of clutter. Literal and figurative."
-Rob Harriman
"Simplicity is sister to science, brother to function."
-Prof. John Schmor
