Excellence through Simplicity | D*I*Y Planner

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Excellence through Simplicity | D*I*Y Planner

In my life, what are the “specific requirements” that I have? What is it, in my personal life, that effectively blocks simplification? Unless I understand those, I cannot achieve excellence through simplicity — I will simply divest myself of “stuff”. And if I do not take into account my beloved spouse’s requirements, I risk far worse consequences. It is life itself that I seek, not mere existence. Trying to reduce my “specific requirements” has been a difficult, on-going, task. Here I found help in another kinsman of the shelf, David Whyte (The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America) who wrote this:

If we have little idea of what we really want from our lives, or what a soulful approach to our work might mean, then often the only entrance we have into soul comes from the ability to say a firm no to those things we intuit lead to a loss of vitality. This way is traditionally known as the via negativa, or negative road…. The via negativa is the discipline of saying ‘no’ when we have as yet no clarity about those things to which we can say yes

Douglas Adams wrote much about the great question of life, the universe and everything (the question whose answer is 42) in his Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series. When dealing with the quandary of this answer, Adams has his advanced computer explain: “I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is… so once you know what the question actually is, you’ll know what the answer means.”

It seems, whether a nineteenth century philosopher or a twentieth century science fiction writer or a corporate poet – all circle around the same fact that Alice faced before the Cheshire Cat. If you don’t know where you want to end up, then it doesn’t matter which direction you go. Until I know what my “specific requirements” are, I cannot reduce the non-value added activities….

* Making something simple is very difficult.
* Making my life simple is even more difficult.

But the true point of beginning seems to be: knowing what I want out of life. For me, that process has included the saying “no” when I lack clarity about those things to which I can say “yes” to. This has been a difficult transition, an incomplete (as yet) transition. Have I “missed out” on occasion? Yes — a glorious yes, a resounding yes, and even a simple yes. But it has eliminated a lot of pointless busyness out of my life. It has allowed me to slow down.

Our beautiful University campus has a rose garden (with a $50 fine for cutting a rose!). The rose garden has several pathways through it. I decided to literally take the time to “smell the roses” as I journey across campus whether it is to a meeting or a pleasure walk. Last week I was walking with a group from our office when I stopped in the rose garden, a wonderful aroma! I declared the lavender rose to be my favorite, soon the others were smelling roses too. Simple pleasures can be contagious! One staff person has worked at the University for seven years, walked through the rose garden many, many times – and had never smelt a single flower until that day.

I open my Levinger’s catalog and covet. I open my Office Depot flyer and covet. I visit Barnes and Noble and drool as well as covet. My process is not complete for there is still the coveting. But I make no purchases based upon my coveting. I wait at least 24 hours. I have discovered I really can live without “that” – the last 24 hours proved I can in fact “live without it”. This past spring and early summer, each Monday evening a friend and I would go to Barnes and Noble for hot chocolate. We would visit together, and we would visit with our friends on the shelf. There were many times I would resolve I wanted to purchase something, determine to do so the next Monday, and by the next Monday wondered why I was so intrigued by that object just the week before. Perhaps that is why my garage had originally filled up with “stuff” purchased for $10 and sold in a yard sale for $2. As I have intentionally sought to simplify my life, both the material “stuff” of life and the immaterial “stuff” of life, I have discovered that I enjoy my present possessions more. The pursuit of simplicity is reorienting my life so that possessions can be genuinely enjoyed without destroying me.

In my introspection I’ve determined that what I want most is a rich soul life. I wish to nourish my soul. The puritans had a saying, “Acquire thy soul with patience.” That is what I have been in process of doing. Even before I knew it had a name. David Whyte wrote: “.… we understand that though the world will never be simple, a life that honors the soul seems to have a kind of radical simplicity at the center of it.”

I like that expression “radical simplicity”. I am in process. Simplicity is not the goal, it is the means to the goal of a rich and fulfilling soul life. Excellence of life is the goal, excellence through simplicity.