live a simple life

I’d like to own my life. Not money and things but just the life.

What simlpe life means to me is freedom. There is no money and things which are worth enough … “Time is money”, “Money are the things you can buy” – all this is not natural, this is artificial. Time and money – these are just expressions invented by humans, they do not exist in nature. And things? Do I really need to have “things”, to posses them? I think not, what I need is just to use them: use “tools” to work, food to eat and “hide” under some shelter. Instead of selling and buying I would prefer to offer and give, and to ask for and get, and get not more than I really need – not more, more, and more…

I know this is “philosophical” and idealistic … it’s like a dream – to live free and natural way, free from greed and all “artificial garbage”.

Still there are people on this planet living such a life, we describe them “primitive”, but how would they describe us, me? Civilized? or just Greedy?
I think they really live, and I have more things and money, but less of true life.

Quote:
“There is no calamity greater than lavish desires.
There is no greater guilt than discontentment.
And there is no greater disaster than greed.”

Lao-tzu (604 BC - 531 BC), The Way of Lao-tzu

This is one of my favourite books. I read also Robert Fulghum’s journal http://www.robertfulghum.com/

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.
These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don’t hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
• Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

[Source: “ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN” by Robert Fulghum. See his web site at http://www.robertfulghum.com/ ]

“Ten thousand flowers in the spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.”

Wu Men Kuan
(lived 1183-1260 in China)

complicated is commonplace;
making the complicated simple,
awesomely simple, that’s creativity.

Charles Mingus