NuNomad Location Independent Living, Lifestyle Design, Independent Travel

This post is not an attempt to make fellow writers and bloggers look bad.

What this post is – hopefully a conversation opener about a conundrum in the self improvement world.

The Mania of Simplicity

Simplicity – it’s a big word right now.  In our manic, over-scheduled, too little sleep, too many details lives many of us are yearning for a simple existence.  And many others are cashing in on that yearning.  Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m a big supporter of people being able to see financial gain through helping others and our world.  In fact, I’d much rather give my money to someone who is doing good, and I believe most of the people writing on the subject of simplicity really are trying to do good.

However, as any writer can tell you, in order to have a constantly returning audience, you must keep coming up with good content.  If you’re in the blogging world, that may mean coming up with content 2 or 3 times per week.  Believe me – it’s not easy!  So, my question is, how can anyone write a constant stream on the subject of simplicity?  I mean, doesn’t the very act of producing mountains of information go against the tenants of simplicity itself?

I tried googling some terms to see how much information is out there.  Here are the results;

“simple living” – 107,000,000 results

“simple living blog” – 46,500,000

“simple living book”   – 24,800,000

Let’s take a look at some titles from folks listed as writing about simplicity:

• “The Road Less Traveled: Top 100 Simple Living Blogs”
• “How to Survive a 14 Hour Work Day”
• “20 Tips to Keep from Spending Money”
• “Making Your Natural Adrenaline Moments Work for You”
• “52 Uses for Rubber Bands”
• “Simple Living Manifesto: 72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life”

You get the idea. I feel tired already.

How can we truly live simple lives in this barrage of information?  Can we?

A Little History

Simplicity is not a new idea.  You can find the same values in our world’s most ancient religions.

From Buddha  – “To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one’s own in the midst of abundance.”

From Lao Tzu - “Manifest plainness, Embrace simplicity, Reduce selfishness, Have few desires.”

From Jesus – “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

For thousands of years humans have recognized the virtues of simplicity.  Think about it, Jesus was preaching the virtues of simplicity to audiences of people, many of whom were probably fishermen, shepherds and the like.  How complicated could their lives have been?  How much simpler did they want to be?  What exactly did simplicity mean to them?

Gandhi's Possessions

In our modern times simplicity has become intertwined with the concept of downsizing and frugality. But is that really what it’s about?  Consider Gandhi.  Gandhi downsized about as much as any human being can.  In fact, the picture here is a photo of all Gandhi’s worldly possessions at the time of his death.  I challenge any modern day nomad to top that!  But was Gandhi’s life simple?  I would say not.  As a leader of the masses, constantly in the public eye, how could a person’s life be simple?

What’s Simplicity About?

Simplicity is not only about having few possessions.  Simplicity is also structural and internal.  A lot of writers address the structural state – how to simplify your house, your office, your schedule.  Other writers go for the internal – how to meditate, clear your mind, live in the moment etc.  There’s a lot of good stuff out there on the subject of simplicity but that’s exactly the problem.  There’s a LOT.  That’s not simple.

Here at NuNomad we’re all about becoming location independent and traveling indefinitely while you maintain your income.  Somehow, in recent times, a location independent lifestyle has also become mixed with the concept of simplicity.  Let me tell you, while it’s possible to eventually achieve a simpler existence, becoming location independent can be far from simple.  You might get your meager backpack and laptop into a one room hut on a beach somewhere but if your mind is buzzing with where you’re going to get good wifi so that you can connect with your clients, making sure you do your visa run on time, planning for Aunt Gracie’s visit,  keeping your social networking going, planning your next destination, etc., etc., life isn’t so simple.

Who Leads a Simple Life and Do I Want That?

So, I ask myself, who really does lead a simple life? It’s impossible to know the inner workings of a person’s mind so I can’t guess about who has the simplest mindset, but from the outside, it seems to me those people with the simplest lives are the people whose day is spent in activity to produce the things they need for survival in places where survival is reasonably easy.  For instance, the woman who sells tamales at the market from a basket in the day.  I’m sure her family eats what she does not sell and they use the money from the sales to finance the other things they need to sustain themselves.  Outside of this work for survival she probably doesn’t have many other life complications if the people in her family are healthy.

A person with such a life may have very low stress and be quite happy at least during the times that their basic needs are being met.  But this person also probably will never know the world at a larger level and may never even desire to.  I have to admit – I wouldn’t want that.

As a person who has been educated about the larger world and who knows all the possibilities of what life can offer, I think I’ve been ruined for true simplicity.  My selfish desire to see more and do more overrides my yearning for simplicity and so, to be honest, I lead a pretty complicated life and I love it that way!

We Don’t Want Simple Lives

And so, now I’ll do the ever dangerous act of presuming.  Here goes.

I think most of us in 1st world countries don’t really want simple lives when it comes down to it.  We think we do and in our mania we go around reading mountains of information and memorizing 52 ways to use a rubber band to make our lives “simpler”.  How crazy is that?

We say we want simpler lives but most of us aren’t willing to let go of our freedoms to choose activities, move about the world or provide our kids with great educations.  Face it, unless you’re independently wealthy, paring your life down to the simplicity of a tamale seller is probably going to mean giving up a lot.  I’ll put money down that most of us won’t do it.

Will we downsize? Yes.  Will we act frugally? Yes.  Will we give up our complicated life structures that allow us our freedoms?  I don’t think we will.  And so, simplicity might be the ever elusive concept we don’t attain.