Goat-Free Simplicity
Every Thursday is Goat-Free Simplicity day at Living Behind The Curve.
Simplicity is one of those buzzwords that floats to the top of the self-help bookshelf every couple of years, and hovers right below the surface the rest of the time. Have you ever paid attention to this sort of thing before? The Wikipedia entry for Simple Living shows that there’s a distinctly… crunchy granola aspect to the modern concept of simplicity . There’s a lot about organic food and vegetarianism and commune living and ecology. Plenty of “back to the land” type of stuff, fetishizing the small cooperative town. For these folks, their simplicity is fundamentally tied to the planet and their impact on it, and I’d even go so far as to say that it’s an orthodox form of environmentalism.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with any of that, but I do think that the concept of living simply has been hijacked by anti-capitalist, anti-corporate and anti-development left wing radicals. I’ll say it again — I don’t have a problem with this. If your life feels fuller and more fulfilling by living in a kibbutz, milking your own goat, and protesting globalization, knock yourself out and have a marvelous time.
I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to buy Birkenstock sandals to simplify your life. The whole “back to the land” thing is fine, but at best it’s an impractical solution for most of us. Not everyone can be a farmer, or can reasonably be expected to relocate like that. Some of us are city people, allergic to fresh air and wide open spaces. Some folks love their desk jobs. It doesn’t really matter, in the end. We can all simplify right from where we are.
So, on Thursdays, I’ll be discussing the philosophy behind simple living, and Dani will bring you the practical reports of actually doing it. We’ll talk about basic stuff reduction, ideas for completely re-evaluating your priorities in life, and why you might need to re-evaluate in the first place. All this and more, entirely goat-free and updated for the 21st century.
Tomorrow, Dani’s back with 11 Things, proving that, instead of creating meaningless categories and additional extra unnecessary levels of complexity, arbitrary structure and hierarchy are sometimes just what we need to survive to the end of the week without completely losing our shit.