Live Simpler

There is no such thing as a simple life. There never has been. Yes, there is a way to live with less complication, less technical things to break down and cause more bills. But simple? Not possible. It is nostalgia for our idea of what the past might have been our nostalgia for what has never actually been.

Jon Stewart proved this with one of his classic montages a few years ago – I am sure I posted it somewhere. 

So, I have a t-shirt with a whale on it soliciting readers of my chest to “live simply”. I like it, I wear it, I am pretty sure I want to live by it. But the thing is, the act of life and the nature of simplicity are mutually exclusive. People are complicated and even if you live the life of a recluse, you are still a people. 

I have long strove for the ideal of living simply and the closer I feel I get to it, the more complicated things become. This is not true only because I live in a remote village in the middle of Africa (really, look up Ango, DRC on the satellite view), but it was true even when I was living in an alleyway compartment or on a small sailboat, or a studio downtown, or my mom's house. I have managed to stay free of mortgage, car payments, blah, blah, blah, but I have never felt I did not have a complicated life. People are not simple and I live and work with people. I am a people. Not simple. You get the picture. 

I am pretty sure I am not the first to come to this realization. I am also pretty sure this is not the first time I have realized it - it is the first time I am admitting it to myself. Perhaps the answer is to just live more simply. 
There is always excess, even in the “simplest” of lives. 

Live simpler, there is beauty in complexity.