People don’t see simplicity as a virtue these days, but that’s mostly because we’re all too busy and stressed out to consider the joys of a simpler life. When we feel bad for whatever reason, our knee-jerk reaction is to find something good for compensation such as drugs, food, intimate relationships or technology, to name a few. Unfortunately, these temporary solutions just lead to greater feelings of deficiency, thus creating a terrible cycle of want. Basically the more you have, the more you want, and the more you want, the more it takes to be happy.
When trying to live a life free from suffering, simplicity is the name of the game. Eliminating extraneous trivialities and shedding as many wants as possible from our daily lives must lead to a more consistent state of contentment. Think about it: Disappointment requires that some expectation not be met, therefore reducing our expectations will always reduce our disappointments. Period.
Have you ever been surprised by a friend or lover with flowers or some other such thoughtfulness? It felt so good because you weren’t expecting anything, and the experience was therefore purely gain. Now to contrast, have you ever been disappointed on a birthday because someone important forgot about you? And there’s this terrible feeling of loss, as if something has been stolen from you. Or imagine you lose a pair of nice sunglasses, and then find them three days later. You did not expect to wear them again, and so your appreciation for them spikes when you first hold them. Imagine if you felt that same appreciation for everything every day. You would die of joy.
It’s not hard to see how expectations shape our view of reality. For one who expects nothing, every single day is filled with positivity because there is no room for a sense of loss. Nothing can be taken from you; only gain is possible. Those who expect much, on the other hand, have a hard time just breaking even. Everything must go exactly right, and then some, in order to for them feel happy.
The drive toward simplicity and reduced expectations can be applied to any part of our lives.: from the clothes we wear to the food we eat, or from our recreational activities to our standards of academic achievement. Every part of our lives brings some degree of reducible stress.
I don’t mean to discourage stress universally. Far from it! Some stress is highly beneficial to our health, such as exercise. I aim only to help you define the positive and the negative stress in your own life, and then ask that you adjust accordingly. This process is deeply personal, and so I can offer little specific guidance. Try separating the wants from the needs. Ask yourself what each of the wants costs, and what fruit it yields; at this point you can better decide if the ends justify the means. If you haven’t found any aspects of your life that you can easily scrap, then you haven’t looked hard enough.
In the end, it’s everyone’s individual responsibility to examine all the parts of their own life and remove the excess. We owe it to our health, our happiness and our overall well-being to peel back a few layers of pomp and frill. And I promise that the deeper we go, the greater our general sense of contentment will be. It works, but you must work at it before you’ll feel the benefits.
I believe the structure for this article, at least for the time being, will be the introduction of some new concept followed by the relation of this new concept to the two central modes of change outlined throughout this column: stepping outside of one’s comfort zone and habituation.
It can be rather uncomfortable when we first give up small pleasures like expensive coffee, shopping for clothes or electronics, smoking cigarettes or watching television because they offer what appears to be relief from a difficult, unpleasant world. But if we understood the deeper reality of our situations, we would see that these minor joys actually do much more harm than good. After all, what is the point of creating an itch for the sole purpose of scratching it? As silly as it sounds, we create many such itches in our daily lives, and ignoring them is the only way to cure them once and for all. Desire grows with satisfaction, but negligence can kill desire much faster than you’d think.
The long-term benefit of lasting relief from trivialities will always outweigh both the short-term pleasure that comes with satisfaction, and whatever discomfort is associated with quitting. We need to remember that our discomfort comes from the disruption of a habit, and that habits can reform in a relatively short time. Start living a simpler life today, and feel the knots of tension begin to slowly untangle.
I’ll continue on with simplicity next week: appreciating simple joys and better ways to tell what is essential and what is extraneous. Maybe I’ll go a little Buddhist on you, but right now it’s late.
A simple life is a happy life. Start eliminating that which is not necessary today. Change is difficult, so challenge yourself! You won’t be sorry.
About the writer:
Keven O’Toole is a junior philosophy major and can be reached at [email protected].
