173. Simplify – Barbara Becker
It seemed nothing short of a visitation from these two wise men, Thoreau and my dad: a reminder that by paring down the complexity of life—whether that be the material possessions or the clutter of unnecessary busyness—we will arrive at what’s truly essential.
My brother and I were sitting on the floor in our parents’ living room, surrounded by piles of objects: the contents of their closets, paintings from the walls, stacks of books, pots and pans. Our task that winter weekend was to clear out the entire house to get it ready for sale.
It was a job neither of us relished. Both of our parents had died earlier that year, within weeks of one another. That, of course, made this project especially charged. It felt that every object we picked up was imbued with a memory of them, and we struggled to sort them into our neatly labeled boxes… “Keep,” “Toss,” or “Donate.” I wasn’t so sure I wanted to part with any of it.
Then I reached for my father’s dog-eared copy of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. I opened right to a page heavy with underlining. There in the center of the page was Thoreau’s exhortation to “Simplify, simplify, simplify!” My father had even put a penciled star in the margin next to those two words. It seemed nothing short of a visitation from these two wise men, Thoreau and my dad: a reminder that by paring down the complexity of life—whether that be the material possessions or the clutter of unnecessary busyness—we will arrive at what’s truly essential.
With this repeated word guiding me like a mantra, I turned back to the task with new resolve and a bit more ease. Truthfully, it has never left me since.
