The title of this post comes from a book I recently read called A Spacious Life: Trading Hustle and Hurry for the Goodness of Limits by Ashley Hales. As she writes, “Creation was given limits: to reproduce, to be subject to the changing of seasons. Subject to time, change, and a cycle between fallow and flourishing…Without the loving setting of limits on the natural world, it would be void and without form.”
I wrote earlier here that limits are not necessarily negative. They can actually function as the guardrails we need to keep us safely on course in our lives. And the goodness of limits makes a spacious life possible as we exchange busyness for boundaries. Benjamin Franklin famously stated, “Haste makes waste” and Henry David Thoreau asked, “Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?”
It is no secret that one of the biggest disrupters of all our lives is the ubiquitous presence of technology, specifically the gadgets most of us carry around on our persons each day. For most of us that is a smartphone. Some may strap on a smartwatch or other digital device also. And then there is the so-called smart home gadgetry, including voice-activated speakers and such. If you OPT to use it, OPTIMIZE your use of it with limits.
An important point to remember is “less is not loss.” As the tagline above reminds us, our brand of minimalism is “living large with less.” Linda and I intentionally limit our exposure to stuff that threatens to inhibit our ability to live and move more freely and lightly. And yes that may include the latest and greatest gadgetry, no matter how flashy and functional it might appear at first glance.
Back in the day French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville observed, “Americans cleave to the things of the world as if assured they will never die. They clutch everything but hold nothing fast, and so lose grip as they hurry after some new delight.” So consider bucking the trend by setting tech-free zones, limiting screen time, switching off notifications, quitting social media, and whatever other actions move you closer to a spacious life.