What Does it Mean to Simplify?

What to do about all this doing?

Have you ever felt the urge to do less, acquire less, have less, worry less, attempt to control less, think less … the list goes on. I have had this urge foremost in my being for over a year now.

Even though I work part-time these days, I still feel quite busy. I have many interests, and they all seem to have a limitless amount to learn about. My pile of to-be-read books is a mile high, and the list of online courses I bought but am still waiting to take has been listed on my whiteboard for two years now. That doesn’t seem to stop me from signing up for new courses – they are all so compelling! There isn’t enough time in the day to immerse myself in everything I want to absorb. And there are friendships and family to nurture and spend good time with. There’s exercise to stay healthy, a modicum of house maintenance, silent retreats to sit, and let’s not forget travel – so many places to see! I still want to learn how to garden and grow food and beautiful plants.

What to do about all this doing?

I recently took a step to tame this swirl and declutter my schedule. I unsubscribed from many newsletters and lists. I took a ‘sabbatical’ from several of the ongoing groups I am part of. Six months of seeing what it felt like not to go to as many meetings. Six months to give myself more space, to see if my mind would settle and clear. It has, at least a little! It has cleared enough for me to feel the importance of slowing down and simplifying. My six months are nearly up now, and I will soon return to those meetings. I look forward to reconnecting with people I care about, even while I aspire to retain the quiet.

Along with my schedule and my mind, I am driven to declutter my house. The closets and the drawers, the (gulp) garage, basement, and attic! My house isn’t particularly cluttered, but it does carry many vestiges of the decades of two adults and three children living together. I am enamored of the idea of not leaving sorting through those layers for others to wade through after I’m gone.

Speaking of dying, I’m drawn to the idea of preparing for my death while I’m alive. Although this preparation is taking something on, it somehow feels like a lightening up. And it can be done gently and slowly. There are many ways we can prepare for the end of our time here.

The most important one is to live as fully as possible while I am still here. To let the fact that I will indeed die lead me to treasure every day, every joy, every moment – even the hard ones – to savor the gift of life itself. My practice helps me do this; cultivating moment-by-moment awareness brings so much appreciation for the miracle of being here.

Then there are the more mundane aspects of preparing for death. The legal and medical documents to be tended to: the will, the beneficiaries, the proxies, and the end-of-life medical wishes. I find this part quite daunting; I guess because I’m unfamiliar with these details.

But the really thoughtful and heart-oriented considerations are what I truly want to say to those I love, what I want them to know about me and about how I feel about them. After all, who knows if I’ll have the time to do this when my end comes? Why not start doing it now?

I hope you don’t find this talk about preparing for death uncomfortable or upsetting. I find it energizing and liberating. I don’t think we talk about death enough in our culture. It’s such a fact of life, and it’s so important; it seems odd that we shy away from mentioning the word or even thinking much about it. Tending to it feels, to me, like a kind of simplifying.

This pull to simplify for me is a way of clearing out, paving the way to really feel life. To breathe. To slow down so I can feel it all, notice it all, savor it all. I know that busyness is part actual activity and part mind-state. One can have a busy-feeling mind even when not doing much. I am drawn toward that mind-at-rest state. This, too, is what a meditation practice can cultivate.

I’ll go about this gently. I’ll set some milestone markers for myself in this practice of slowing down and simplifying, and check in with myself every three months and see how it’s going - simplifying the process of simplifying!

What does the idea of simplifying stir up in you – delight, fear, indifference, ‘I have no time for this now’? Maybe you are already living into this; if so, I’d love to hear how you are going about it and what you’re learning!

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