Simplify

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”
Hans Hofmann

Our lives get pretty complicated. We are bombarded with messages that our lives will not be complete unless we buy whatever they are selling. Our society encourages us to have as many things as it takes to keep up with the Jones’s. It has become a status symbol to have the most, biggest, fastest, and most expensive, things. We accumulate as many things as much as we can manage. Our lives get bogged down in the details of finding them, getting them, looking after them, and worrying about them.

Our error is that we have not thought about which of those things are really important to us and which of them we have acquired in order to impress others and which of them we acquired because they seemed appealing at the time. How many things have you bought, and then realized that this was not what you really wanted after all, it just didn’t bring you the sense of satisfaction or even happiness that you had hoped for? Many of the things we have are simply unnecessary. They just take up space, in our minds as well as in the physical world.

We need to be able to tell the difference between what is necessary and what is unnecessary. Then we need to get rid of the unnecessary things, so that we can find and focus on the things we really want and need. If we don’t, finding the good stuff can be like finding a needle in a haystack. It’s pretty difficult. It is only when we rid our lives of everything except those things that we really want and need, that we can find what we want. And when we get rid of all the fluff, there will be room left for even more good things to come into our life. Simplify your life and you will be rewarded.