The Element of Simplicity and Its Hope for Living a More Satisfying Meaningful Life

When I was young, I felt poor and disadvantaged and felt my background was unsophisticated.

I compared myself to people whom I thought had a better home life than I did; neater more stylish houses, life with more routine. I felt unsophisticated and out of whack compared to them.

I did not understand there are many types of home lives.

That desperation resides in quiet elegant houses seemingly without drama; and the inhabitants of those homes may actually long for the crazy connectedness and wild times and interactions that were prevalent in my childhood home.

Without the benefit of this knowledge, when I became a teenager, I strived to develop the sophistication I assumed I lacked. 

Most of the ways in which you can acquire style and sophistication require money. 

Since I did not have money, I had to come up with something else.

I found my answer in the dictionary.

Yes, the dictionary.

I thought to develop a rich and complex vocabulary which I would impress others with. So in my free time, I started studying the dictionary. I pounced on impressive foreign sounding words such as sobriquet and ennui and zeit geist. I started using them at every opportunity.

I was still in India at the time. 3 of my sisters had already left the nest. Two were in America, a third was in Calcutta - studying management at IIM.

I would write long letters to these sisters.  I would pack these letters with words like sobriquet and ennui and zeit geist.

One of my sisters said in a letter to my mother, "we don’t understand a word of what Minoo writes to us." The comment stung.

When I look back at that time, I now see it was an attempt to feel important and worthy.

We all need to feel important and worthy.

We think if we are not sophisticated and worldly, then we are not important and worthy.

I was trying to fill this perceived lack with big words.

Whenever we perceive a lack in ourselves, we will try to fill it with something.

The bigger the perceived lack, the more we will try to compensate and the grander will be our efforts.

  

I compensated for the fact that I was not rich, sophisticated and privileged by using words which were associated with having a rich, sophisticated and privileged background.

But "Big hat, small cattle" as they say.

It was all a game.

I now see I was just as precious without these big words as with them.

The feeling of lack came from comparing myself with other people.

We make the mistake of comparing ourselves with other people and feeling inferior about all the things we don’t have that they do.

We think we have to have this, this and this to be worthy (a good education, a job, a marriage, a stylish home, successful normal kids).

In actual fact, we don't need any external crutches to support who we are.

And all our treasures are on the inside.

There was no place for my big words in advertising.

I had to learn to be brief and simple, to make my message universally understandable.

In writing this blog, I rarely use big words.

I now understand there's more sophistication in restraint than in anything else.

And it takes restraint not to want to come off superior to anyone else - whether through words or the things we surround ourselves with.

I read somewhere when people think about time, their thoughts become philosophical and spiritual, and noble and ethical ideas spring to their minds

When people think about money, their thoughts become materialistic, and selfish and unethical ideas are more likely to spring to their minds.

I have observed this in myself and know it to be true.

Whenever I think about time, it makes me think about how limited it is as a resource and makes me question whether I am using my time well.

It brings a sense of urgency in doing things which are truly valuable and meaningful.

It keeps me writing these posts.

And it makes me more compassionate in my thoughts about, and interactions with others.

I think to myself, "When I am gone, what will my life have been good for?  Would I have been a net positive to this world?”

When I think about money, I think about deals and steals - how I can earn more money,   how I can hold on to the money I have, how I can get the best deal, how I can get around taxes - all selfish stuff connected with me and my net worth.

Sometimes I have to stop myself and say, "Minoo switch your thoughts back to time – learn to let go of the idea that you need to think about money all the time, otherwise you will be losing time which is the most valuable thing you have.”

Doing this has helped me keep money and material things from taking over my life.

Everything we buy beyond the necessities and comforts in our life could be related to false thinking and believing we have a lack...

A lack of looks

A lack of personality

A lack of love

A lack of excitement

A lack of sophistication

A lack of power

A lack of prestige

A lack of relative status

When we move beyond this false thinking, we will start spending our time well.

In order to do that, we should embrace Laozi's prescription:

“Manifest plainness,

Embrace simplicity,

Reduce selfishness,

Have few desires."

We do some activities in a repetitive way and then we can't give them up - whether it's renovating our houses again and again – adding a deck here, a porch there; tinkering with our cars again and again – tricking them out with this now, then with that; trying to fix what is wrong with our bodies again and again – now botox, now liposuction, now chin lift, or whatever. 

We become guinea pigs of our own making. 

We go round and round in mouse traps of our own design.

We should look at everything we do and ask ourselves, is it worth it to keep doing this?

What would I lose if I stopped? What would I gain?

Henry David Thoreau, who was a master of simplicity said: “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.”

I can testify to the truth of this from my own experience.

I quit my job in June of 2010 and because I embarked on the new adventure of becoming a commission software implementer and an SPM consultant, and it took some time to get there and to get up to speed, I earned very little money in the next 2 years. In fact, by US Census levels, my income was below the poverty level.

But because I had pared back and simplified my life, I did not feel poor.

I felt rich.  I felt blessed.

To be doing Xactly implementations

To have become a successful meditation practitioner

To be blogging

To be able to go for 5 mile walks every other day

I couldn't have asked for more.

Other people did not see my situation in the same way.

They saw poverty where I saw riches.

They saw scary idleness where I saw freedom to use my time as I please.

They saw loneliness where I saw time to meditate and reflect and grow as a human being.

One of my friends said to me, "When I told my children I was unhappy in my job the other day, one of them said," please don't do a Minoo on us.  Don’t quit your job like she did."

I said, "Did you tell them how happy I am?"

Indeed, while everyone around me was whining and complaining about their jobs, and their contractors and what not, I was reveling in my new way of life.

No longer was I walking around like Gulliver tied down by all sorts of false Lilliputian concepts of what it meant to live life.

But then thinkers and philosophers and artists have always known that simplicity can do for us what all the tinkering with our lives may not be able to do – fill the lack.

August Rodin said, "The more simple we are, the more complete we become."

My financial circumstances have improved in the last two years.

But I continue to live the simple life I adopted 2 years ago.

Why would I give up the golden treasures dug up from that time?

I am reminded about a Diogenes story.

Diogenes is one of my favorite historical characters and I have blogged about him before.

Bread and Lentils

Diogenes was eating a simple meal of bread and lentils for supper.

When Aristippus, who lived comfortably by being a toady and advisor to the king, saw this, he said 'Diogenes, if only you would learn to be subservient to the king, you would not have to live on lentils.'

Diogenes replied, 'Aristippus, if only you learned to live on lentils, you would not have to be subservient to the king".”

One of the reasons I live a simple life is because I do not want to be subservient to the rat race.

Besides “bread and lentils” has opened up my life to intellectual, spiritual and creative riches.

When I was no longer a spoke in the great commercial wheel, a long sleeping creative spark awoke in me.

It manifested itself in new adventures like learning Xactly and becoming an SPM consultant, starting this blog, learning to meditate.

Having experienced this, I feel everyone could do with a "bread and lentils" time.

A time, in which, even if you have enough money, your connections to power and status and identification with particular ideas of who you are and what you are meant for, are severed.

A pause like the one I wrote about in the Element of the Creative Pause And Its Hope For Turning Us Into Idea-Generating Machines.

"Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication” said Leonardo Da Vinci.

Indeed throughout my life, I have been surprised by the nobility of simple souls.

In my last post, I told you about Debbie.

Debbie was a simple down to earth soul.

She was also a noble soul, as I was to discover.

If you remember from my last post, one of the many wonderful things Mariam did for me was offer me the use of Debbie's secretarial help when she was travelling.

Debbie cheerfully threw herself into this. There was no “why should I work for someone who is not my employer?” vibe whatsoever.

Besides helping me with typing, she was ever ready to help me any way she could.

I thought she might help me call my clients to collect on my payments and she readily agreed when I asked her.

Debbie would get on the phone with a client who owed me a payment and say, “I am calling from Purple Patch.  You owe us $x……for the ….assignment.  When can we pick up the check? ”

She would do this every day till the client wrote the check.  Then she would call me and say, “Minoo, your check is ready to be picked up.”  And I would send my driver to pick up the check.

But I was to find out how noble Debbie was when the “waste paper” incident happened.

Once upon a time in the pre-recyling days

From early in my advertising career, I had this thing about wasting paper.

I always used both sides of paper to write copy.

And if I found any waste paper lying around - paper on which something had been printed and then discarded - I would immediately pick it up and use the back to write copy on it.

Advertising produced a lot of waste paper in those days, because even if we changed a single word of copy for an ad, the copy would have to be printed again.

When I started giving Debbie typing work, it suddenly struck me I had a new waste paper source.

Debbie often had to type copy over and over again because of spelling mistakes or changes.

I could ask her to give me the discards.

“Debbie,” I said, “please give me any paper you are wasting.  I can use the reverse sides to write copy.”

Debbie appreciated this, and whenever I went into Mariam's office, she would give me a stack of waste paper to take home.

Now as I said in the Element of Believing in Someone and Its Hope for Helping Them Move Mountains, Mariam, Debbie’s boss who was also my ex-colleague and client, was very sensitive to my needs.

So one of the things she had started doing for me was to send me the advertising brief through her driver ahead of meetings, so I could familiarize myself with the materials before we met to discuss the brief.

One day with an assignment coming up, Mariam called Debbie into her office, handed her some materials and said “Debbie, please give this to my driver to deliver to Minoo”.

I hadn't been in Mariam’s office for a while, and Debbie had not been able to give me any waste paper in a while. 

So thoughtfully, she took out a little stack of waste paper and threw it into the envelope along with the brief and gave it to the driver to deliver to me.

Two days later, Mariam called me and said she had received some further background information for the assignment, which she would have Debbie send me.

When Debbie got this material, she threw in another stack of waste paper into a second envelope and handed it to the driver.

Now it so happened I didn't open either of these 2 envelopes. 

I had been extra busy, so I brought them unopened to my meeting with Mariam.

“Hey Mariam, I didn't get a chance to go over what you sent me, but let's go over it now.” I said, handing her the unopened envelopes.

Mariam opened the first one and out fell out all this waste paper, including letters she had written to banks, and what not.

You should have seen the look on her face.

“My goodness,” she said, “I don't know what's wrong with Debbie.  She has put a whole lot of junk into this envelope along with the brief.”

I immediately realized what had happened – all the so called “junk” was the waste paper Debbie had thoughtfully sent me.

I was still collecting my thoughts on how to deal with this, when Mariam pressed the bell on her table to summon Debbie.

Ding.  Ding. Ding went the bell.

Debbie came into the room.

“Yes, Mariam?” she said.

“Debbie, what’s the matter with you?"  You put all this junk in the envelope we sent to Minoo.  Where is your head, girl? ”

Debbie glanced at me ever so briefly.

Meanwhile Mariam was opening the second envelope, even as she was ticking off Debbie.

Lo and behold, another stack of papers unrelated to the advertising brief fell out of that envelope too.

“My goodness, Debbie.  This envelope has them too.  Whatever has gotten into you?”

I was amazed at what happened next.

I was ready for Debbie to spill the beans and put the blame on me.

But without looking at me, Debbie said “I am so sorry Mariam.  I don't know what got into me. It won't happen again.”

“It better not” said Mariam. “You can go now.”

Mariam shook her head and rolled her eyes after Debbie left the room and we returned to the briefing session, on which I could hardly concentrate.

I was waiting for it to finish, so I could go to Debbie’s desk and deliver Debbie an apology and a thank you, both of which I urgently owed her.

As soon as Mariam and I were done, I ran out of Mariam’s office to Debbie.

“I am so so sorry you had to take the rap for me like that,Debbie,” I said. “And it was so nice of you not to say anything.”

I told her I never wanted her to get into trouble again, and she should stop giving me any more waste paper from that day.

But I have never forgotten Debbie’s kindness and nobility till today.

In fact, whenever I think about nobility, I think about Debbie and how she took the fall for something that was my fault.

Yes, nobility is the ultimate sophistication.

I will end this post with a simple prescription for health and vitality from Laura Ingalls:

"I once knew a woman, not very strong, who to the wonder of her friends went through a time of extraordinary hard work without any ill effects.

I asked her for her secret and she told me that she was able to keep her health, under the strain, because she took 20 minutes, of each day in which to absolutely relax both mind and body. She did not even “sit and think.” She lay at full length, every muscle and nerve relaxed and her mind as quiet as her body. This always relieved the strain and renewed her strength.”

What is that if not meditation - which is another simple prescription for the ills of today which are all related to the lack we feel.

As always thanks for reading and have a great day and week….M ….a Pearl Seeker like you.  Thanks to Ajay, Ananda, Audrey, Badri, Rosie and Subhakar for their comments on Facebook on my last post and for everyone else for their votes.  P.S. If you are attracted to the simple life, I have written other posts promoting a simple life, including The Simple Life and You've Heard About Wasabi.  How about Wabi Sabi?