Lin Yutang,
Chinese writer,
1895-1976

Years ago when I had no permanent job, no money, and no immediate prospects for a job, everything was very different. I had no possessions other than a few books and a few boxes of memorabilia and keepsakes. That was it. About once a month I bought a book, and I savored it slowly. I went to the library. I had no computer, as there were no personal computers or smart phones back then. I had few clothes. A couple of pairs of shoes. A relatively new car, however, which I held onto for ten years (my current car is 22 years old).

I was often unhappy and depressed at being so transient, so rootless, so totally without any anchors in my life. But in my lack of possessions, I had a great gift. I didn’t appreciate how much I had in my poverty as I do now in my abundance.

I have thus been neglecting, or incapable of, really seeing deeply into things, such as all the rich layers of meaning and thought in a single, good book. This is because so many other books, magazines, the Internet, etc., clamor for attention. There is clutter, mental and physical in my current state. I am surrounded. I want out. But I really don’t. Those feelings always pass, as if in a dream.

I look back to 1995 when I moved into the apartment I called home for 15 years. I had a bed, two lamps, a recliner chair, a tiny, round dining room table, and empty space all around the walls. A few boxes of things here and here, including the memorabilia I’ve held onto since high school and college. Books, but not too many. Life was simpler. But that began to rapidly change as my apartment started to fill up as my ability to purchase things I wanted increased.

For most of my life before then I lived from paycheck to paycheck when I had a job, or in an actual state of poverty. But I didn’t think of it as such. I had enough to eat and I had shelter, sometimes provided by my family and loved ones when I was down on my luck or going through depression. I was lucky. I had a loving, supportive and accepting family. Many don’t and end up homeless. I very much could have without my family to help me get back on my feet time and again.

So it’s strange to sometimes long again for those days of austerity. It becomes harder and harder to give away anything, to throw out, to eliminate the clutter. After so long accumulating things I become resigned to it. There’s no rational reason for it. Does it all fill some deep seated psychological need for security and comfort to possess things?

And then, what are those things I desire that are “beyond my reach?” That is the key phrase in Yutang’s words quoted above. It’s now beyond my reach to live in a house in the country, as I had so often dreamed of. It is beyond my reach to read and know everything that I perceive I want to know about history, philosophy, psychology, comparative religion, media, communications, ancient wisdom traditions, UFOs, consciousness, physics, the social sciences, to name just a few big areas of learning.

I am voraciously curious. I am a knowledge generalist. I read countless articles on the Internet. I subscribe to a dozen or more magazines. I want to know everything about literally everything I can question and possibly even know in this life. My reach has exceeded my ability to grasp just one thing at a time and know it fully and well and be content with that. That’s never enough. I have to know more, read more, watch ever more YouTube videos. Read endless articles, or rather, bookmark them for later reading in the Pocket app where thousands of articles reside. And last but not least, buy more things that delight, amuse and strike my fancy. I am, for better or worse, a fully realized citizen of our Consumer Republic

But, what is it that I really want to know anyway? We are inundated with information. How much do we actually need to know to live useful lives and contribute to making our lives, and those of others, better ones?

To live a more simple life? In this mad-cap, information-driven technological age, the luxury of a simple life seem attainable only by people who want to go back to the land and are content with very little. In a sense they reject society as it is now. Who can blame them? Some people seem to be able to get down to the basics of what should constitute happiness. But the ceaseless search for that eludes so many of us in our younger years and in the prime of our lives.

But what about in old age when we have retired and no longer are part of the rat race? I don’t have the anxiety of having to hold onto a job to support myself every day. This is immensely life altering and liberating. I have time to think deeply about everything and do exactly what I want. This is unheard of when you’re young. Who has the time?

I try to keep myself well-informed, but have become highly over-informed. My actual knowledge is a mile wide and inches deep. I end up glossing over the surface of countless news stories and current events. I once wrote about my frustration that I didn’t get to watch a Bill Moyers PBS special on the cover-up of the deadly dangers of vinyl chloride by the chemical industry, a systematic public relations effort to deceive. I have the transcript of the program bookmarked on my old computer, but I haven’t delved into it yet.

I don’t know enough about other religions such as Islam, so that when I have to defend my own beliefs, I find I am ill-informed about the beliefs and teachings of other religions. I know a lot of things in general about all the world’s major religions, but not the nuances I wish I could talk about.

There are countless other things I want to know. The list is endless. What are the latest advances against the scourge of Alzheimer’s disease? How does one invest one’s money for the future in light of turmoil in the stock market? If you can give to only so many charities, which ones among all the deserving ones should you give to? How MUCH money does one need to live on these days? Why does housing take up a third to a half of our income? Isn’t there something seriously wrong with our society that we take this as a given? Is there any wonder that there are so many homeless individuals and families, and so many people without health insurance?

We do need to know about all these things, but how much must we know? And can we make a difference if we are not sufficiently knowledgeable about these things.

It is all overwhelming sometimes. Most of us can’t go off into the woods and live for two years in a cabin by ourselves like Henry David Thoreau did in the mid 19th century. We have obligations, we have to live in the world, as much as we might like to get rid of everything we own and trade it for a life of voluntary simplicity. But to do that, don’t we still have to live in some form of community with others? And aren’t there going to be those in the communes or alternative lifestyle communities who are mean, greedy and selfish? We are all interdependent. We need others for all our basic needs.

All these thoughts can go through my mind as I sit here on the sofa at 9 pm on a Monday night in February. The news cycle has been so horrible and unsettling the past two weeks that I am not just ill at ease with the world outside my window now, but frightened in a way I’ve never been before. I wish I was sitting in a chair by the ocean, the sound of the surf washing all my worries away temporarily until I am released into a state of pure being, if I can even recognize what that is. Or, is that vague, transcendental state also something which is beyond my reach?

I take great comfort in the fact that I can visit beautiful parks, gardens and woodlands, or go to the beach anytime I want to and push aside my anxiety and not worry about what lies ahead of me tomorrow or whether I am going to dip into those five books I am simultaneously reading.

My thoughts and attention are diverted every which way unless I stand back and realize what is actually beyond my reach, but also, what I can accomplish in my own small way each day. I must learn to focus on one thing at a time. I must be content with observing and learning from the simple beauty that is all around me just outside my door, and above me in the sky and warm wind. I need to let the discordant noises from within and without fade away into nothingness, do what I can to alleviate whatever ills plague me in the present moment, and then let the answers come to me because I am no longer nervously seeking after knowledge or wisdom, or futilely and incessantly reaching for and distracting myself with the superficial entertainment and the base things and desires of this world.

I guess it’s never too late for some to start living simply. However, I just don’t believe I ever can because I don’t want to de-clutter my life. It may be too full of books I’ll never read as well as a multitude of cherished “things,” but it’s all part of what makes life rich and interesting for me in old age. There’s never a dull moment. I can’t give that up.A