Live As Simply As You Can

(Author's note As you are reading this, I am likely on a plane or have already arrived for my next weekend of clean-up at The Ranch.  Responses may be delayed due to a lack of InterWeb.)

One of the seemingly great joys I have been experiencing of late is being introduced to Orthodox Christian thought. While I do not know that I would ever become fully Orthodox, anything that involves a historic tradition will garner my interest (also, they seem to have a pretty good social media presence). It is simply full of pithy thoughts and comments.

Paisios of Athos is not fully unknown to me; as it turns out I purchased a work of his at The Great Meteora when we were in Greece in 2023. I overall enjoyed the work which is called With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man (one of a total 6 volumes; I should have bought them all when I had the chance); it comes across both with wisdom and that sort of slightly out-of-touchness that the Religious orders sometimes seem to have with the modern world. We heard from him at least once here.

All of that said, his words today really struck me.

Modern life is complicated and difficult, especially if you live "in the modern world" - which in my case I have to do, somewhat not by choice And when I say complicated, it has become even more so in recent years. Just myself alone, I have two computers (work and home), two phones (work and phone), a home I "own" (in that I pay a mortgage on it), an apartment I rent, and a property I manage (four e-mail accounts as well as if I think about it). Plus all of the stuff and expenses that go along with all of that. And effectively having a set of long distance family and friend relationships. Somewhere along the way trying to my own thing as well.

If I think about it that way, it becomes a bit much. Which perhaps is why this quote speaks to me so much.

Last Saturday was, for me, almost the perfect day. I did not have to leave the house if I did not want to. I read. I made cheese and soup and bread and cucumber salad. I let the rabbits out. I practiced harp and Iaijustu. I read some blogs. I walked.

Simple things. Cost me not a cent (well, except for utilities of course). But what a pleasant day I had and how relaxed I was when I went to bed.

Along with avoiding the mantra and mindset "More, More, More" I need to adopt the mantra and mindset of "Simpler, Simpler, Simpler". Because Paisios is right: we become slaves to the complexity of modern life and hardly realize it until the chains are firmly around our wrists and necks.