An Ordinary Life

In this hyped age of superlative lifestyles flaunted online by so-called “influencers,” people are duped into thinking it is normal to live such ostentatious lives. But as successful artist and bestselling author Austin Kleon suggests, “You do not need to have an extraordinary life to make extraordinary work. Everything you need to make extraordinary art can be found in your everyday life.”

And whether or not we aspire to live “creative” lives, we all can find meaning in the dailiness of life, including our routines, hobbies, and relationships. Former monk Thomas Moore admits, “I imagine life not as an ambitious quest, but as an anti-quest, a search for the ordinary and unexceptional.” None of which is to suggest we are to simply coast through life with no aspirations, but our contentment never comes from comparison with others.  

As I wrote in an earlier post titled A Quiet Life, one scriptural admonition actually is to “make it your ambition to lead a quiet life.” While “quiet” is not necessarily synonymous with “ordinary,” both often contribute toward a meaningful life “because worldly ambition is grossly overrated, not to mention misdirected.” So, one means to personally experience an ordinary life is to examine what constitutes a meaningful life in one’s estimation.

“I lead by what older standards might well be considered an ordinary life, and yet by the movement of our times this life has become extraordinary,” writes W.D. Wetherell in North of Now: A Celebration of Country and the Soon to Be Gone. “A walker in a sedentary age; a lover of quiet in a century that has the volume turned up full blast; a reader in a visual age; a writer in one that is increasingly aliterate.” Sounds good to me.

Off the Beaten Path

Whether under the title of “the road less travelled” (see here), “off the beaten path” (see above), or “the road not taken” (see below), I think we all have wondered if we are on the right one or if somewhere along the way we missed a turn and perhaps ought to take a detour or even make a u-turn. I for one try to concentrate on the road ahead of me rather than fixate on the rearview mirror for long.

With that said, I was thinking about our journey to date and noticed a trend worth contemplating a little more closely. Linda and I tend to live in places adjacent to more popular (read: populated) places, thus allowing us to live affordably yet with access to more expensive amenities. For example, we now live in one of the smaller towns in the Shenandoah Valley yet are close to pricier places like Charlottesville and Roanoke.

Earlier, we lived in the award-winning town of Franklin, a little south of the much bigger and busier city of Nashville. Before that we lived for several years in the quaint town of Mount Dora outside of the tourist capital of Orlando. And even earlier, we lived in the bucolic town of Broken Arrow, a growing suburb of much larger Tulsa. All of which is to say there are benefits to living outside the bubble of bigger places.

But I think it is worth noting that the beaten path is rarely one of least resistance. There are tradeoffs with doing so, as with anything in life, such as sacrificing conveniences that come with living in cities, including malls and airports. Yet malls are dying and many airports are dysfunctional if not dystopian. We have not flown in years and we try to shop local when necessary so we do not feel we are missing much at all.

In my experience, the immortal words of author George Moore ring true: “A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.” And no one says it better than poet Robert Frost in his poem The Road Not Taken: “I shall be telling this with a sigh; Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—; I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”

Making a Life

I rarely pay cover price for a book but I recently shelled out thirty bucks for a hardcover book from Princeton University Press that I knew I would read and keep: Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living by John Kaag and Jonathan Van Belle. It was an insightful read and one I highly recommend as a field guide to interpreting the meaning of work.

“There is a difference—an absolute gulf—between ‘just making a living’ and getting a life or truly living. This is the abiding message of Walden. The frenetic busyness of modern life should never be confused with the essential business of living,” write the authors. In other words, we ought to work to live rather than live to work.

“Thoreau had a choice to make, one that we all have: either he could make more money to pay for an increasing number of wants and needs, or he could match his wants and needs to the money at his disposal. Thoreau, very famously, decided on the latter…Even and especially in his unambitious life, Thoreau was a master at the business of living,” the authors conclude.

And Peter France, author of Hermits: The Insights of Solitude, echoes the same sentiment: “Thoreau saw that the luxuries and comforts of modern living had become its necessities and that people were making slaves of themselves in order to pay for them. His solution, which goes back to Socrates, was to see how many things he could live without.”

Contrary to popular belief, Thoreau was far from a layabout who simply built his cabin at Walden Pond to escape life back in Concord. He was a man of many talents who taught school, surveyed land, manufactured pencils, studied nature, and chronicled it all by writing more than TWO MILLION words in 14 journals over the course of 24 years.

So, I shall end this post by allowing Thoreau to speak to us directly: “This spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet.”

Streamlining Your Stuff

As regular readers can attest, I have written for years here about how Linda and I downsized our lives in order to upsize our lifestyles and “live large with less.” And central to that process has been our intentional paring of possessions to our favorite ones. As a result, even gargantuan tasks like whittling our library from more than 1500 volumes down to as little as 15 has not felt like a huge sacrifice because we thoughtfully limited our selections to ones we loved.

And I have long followed the journey of another couple pursuing a similar path over at Innermost Life, where the other day I read a thought provoking post titled “The Art of Love: How I Came to An Innermost Life” by Diana Lorence. In it she shares the story of how she and her husband, Michael, have sought to simplify their lives the same way. As she writes, “There are two ways to simplify your life. One way is eliminating the things from your life that don’t really matter, until you are left with what you need.

The other way is the art of filling your life with what you love most in the world. Love has a strange emancipating power that lets everything else fall away…If you make a way to live with what you truly love—not just with what you happen to have or want—then you may find yourself simply leaving everything else behind,” she writes. It is this principle that seems to be the missing ingredient in many people’s recipe for simplifying their life.

The bottom line is whether or not you choose to move as often as us (a dozen times) or the Lorences (a couple dozen times), you can still benefit from streamlining your stuff using love as the litmus test for what to treasure and what to trash. My elderly mother just moved hundreds of miles after living almost two decades in one place and as tough as it was for her it was helpful to limit items to ones she cherished enough to pack, store, and unpack between homes. So, wherever you are on your journey of life identify what you love and try leaving the rest behind.

Acts of Resilience

With the new year comes fresh opportunities for us all to practice acts of resilience. No matter how together we may strive for our lives to appear to others, we each are faced with challenges both big and small. As resilience is defined as “buoyancy, elasticity, and the act of rebounding,” it becomes indispensable during times of transition, such as the several moves for Linda and I since becoming minimalists more than a decade ago.

Depending on your personality type you can relish the changes such upheaval brings or you may need a period of adjustment to place events in perspective. While moving for us has been an enjoyable experience overall, the older we get the more we are considering the blessing of roots, such as our move here to my home state of Virginia. Not only do I have family and friends here but we are closer to Linda’s clan also.

As I wrote about at Rainbows and Unicorns, even our experience of living at a lighthouse on the coast of Maine (pictured above) was not without its unique challenges. And suffice it to say that we experienced some more upon moving here, including maintenance issues like a six-months-long leaky shower and a hit-and-run automobile accident our first week here. All this highlights the need for us to bounce back from adversity rather than adopting lousy attitudes.

With any move comes the need to establish accounts with local vendors and we are gradually securing the services of a dentist, hairstylist, insurance agent, tax preparer, cell provider, and the like. And after the remoteness of life in coastal Maine, it is nice that our relatively small hamlet here is getting a Starbucks, Dunkin’and Chick-fil-A this year, so life is good in these parts. Wherever you may call home, here is to a more resilient you this year!

A Reverse Bucket List

Linda and I were discussing our minimalist journey to date and we agreed that our biggest takeaway has been learning to ignore peer pressure in order to live the life we envisioned for ourselves. However well-meaning even our families have been, we realized the need for us to focus on our dreams no matter how we were misunderstood by others. And suffice it to say that not caring what other people think of you and your plans can be incredibly liberating. 

There is a thought-provoking scripture that speaks to this very point as it urges readers: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” In other words, our belief systems determine whether or not we will simply “go along to get along” with other world views. And as it relates to our leasing lifestyle of “living large with less,” not everyone agrees with or supports it, and that is okay, at least with us. 

“People want you to want what they want. If you want the same things they want, then their want is validated. If you don’t want the same things, your lack of wanting can, to certain people, come across as judgment,” author Ann Patchett writes. “How I came not to care about other people’s opinions is…I was born with a compass…This compass has been incalculably beneficial for writing—for everything, really—and for that reason I take very good care of it.” 

“As we grow older, we shouldn’t acquire more, but rather strip things away to find our true selves—and thus, peace…What I need to do, in effect, is stop seeing my life as a canvas to fill, and start seeing it more as a block of marble to chip away at and shape something out of,” suggests writer Arthur Brooks. “I need a reverse bucket list [emphasis mine]. My goal for each year of the rest of my life should be to throw out things, obligations, and relationships until I can clearly see my refined self in its best form.”

So, I dare you to define your life’s dream and then pursue it with passion, realizing that naysayers may come and go, but desire prevails. Rather than striving to see how many items you can pack onto a typical bucket list before you die, consider going for quality over quantity, and intentionally limiting your list to truly satisfying experiences. If your journey is at all like ours has been, one day you may realize the life you dreamed of is the one you are living!

A Quiet Life

As I write this the ocean waves are lapping the rocky coastline upon which our humble abode is affixed and I am savoring the otherwise quiet repose of living at the edge of the earth. Suffice it to say it is a much welcome respite from the spiteful rhetoric of the recent election and its noisy aftermath. And so I am endeavoring to follow the scriptural admonition of “make it your ambition to lead a quiet life.” 

I gotta credit writer and pastor John Mark Comer with getting this concept on my radar screen with his thought-provoking book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: “That’s the goal, the end, the vision of success: a quiet life…[The apostle] Paul’s line reminds me of the long-standing advice of Saint Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the Jesuit order): ‘Try to keep your soul always in peace and quiet.’”

I for one have never considered myself an overly ambitious person as I am very content with living a simple yet fulfilling life with my best friend as my wife in joint relationship with our Creator. As bestselling author Donald Miller observes: “It’s interesting that in the Bible…the only practical advice given about living a meaningful life is to find a job you like, enjoy your marriage, and obey God. It is as though God is saying, Write a good story, take somebody with you, and let me help” [emphasis mine].

I LOVE that. I don’t know about you but I gravitate toward simple truth that I can apply to my daily life and to me the above statement sums it all up neatly. It is not only daring but doable, much like this pithy yet profound quote from former Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin: “Spirituality means to me living the ordinary life extraordinarily well.” So, don’t let words like quiet and ordinary steer you away from living a meaningful life because worldly ambition is grossly overrated, not to mention misdirected.

To share an update of how I am chasing a quieter life, I signed off of Twitter and I encourage you to consider limiting your own activity on so-called social media. While I gleaned some good from it, much of it only added noise and negativity to my life, which I do not need nor do you. Here is to a quiet life!

The Village Life

With a health crisis enveloping much of the outside world, it is during such times that I am glad I live in a remote fishing village of a couple hundred or so souls. Port Clyde, America, as it is euphemistically referred to, is located at the very tip of the Saint George peninsula jutting into the Gulf of Maine. As a matter of course, we live far away from major airports, shopping malls, sports stadiums, and other large venues with crowds of people, thus minimizing our exposure. And Linda has since learned she can work remotely from home for the next couple of weeks. 

Even before the “stuff hit the fan” this week, Linda and I were discussing how much we love the village vibe here. As a case in point, the other morning I called our local diner (located in the general store) to see if our favorite cook, Melissa, was back from her honeymoon so we could come for breakfast. Next, I called our postmistress (or female postmaster), Brie, at our post office to see about renewing our mailbox. And finally, I called the town office and spoke to the clerk, Patty, (whom I reminded we live at the lighthouse) to inquire about an upcoming event. 

To further reinforce my point, after visiting our nearest Walmart, located off of the peninsula, and discovering that the hordes had cleared the store of all paper products, we returned to our beloved general store to stock up on the requisite toilet paper supply, which was plentiful. As none other than Mark Twain once observed, “If you want to know a man truly, get to know him in a village, not a city.” And for another of my ruminations about village life, I welcome readers to check out one of my earlier posts about the simpler lifestyle it engenders here.

In closure, I share some thoughts of a fellow Maine resident, renowned author Doris Grumbach, from her book Life in a Day: “I have become a minimalist of experience. Once I thought I could never travel to all the places I wanted to see, but in old age, the cove, in the variety of its seasons and weathers and times, seems to satisfy my need for new sights.” 

And she quotes Somerset Maugham here: “Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest.” 

The Contemplative Life

One of the chief draws of living here at a remote lighthouse is the time and space to pursue what I like to call the contemplative life. And as you might suspect, the winter is especially conducive to curling up with a good book, a hot drink, and some relaxing music to get the creative juices flowing. What is more, cutting the cable television from our lives has made a radical contribution toward a more contemplative atmosphere.

Not long ago I read a moving book titled We Were an Island: The Maine Life of Art and Nan Kellam by Peter P. Blanchard III. It is the amazing story of a couple who bought an island off the coast of Maine last century to retreat from society and live the contemplative life on their own terms. As Blanchard writes, “Art and Nan were in open rebellion against the practices and priorities of their media-dominated century. They knew that, on the mainland, cherished moments of undistracted, mutual enjoyment in reading, writing, and listening had become a rarity.” 

And another book I recently read is titled In Praise of Wasting Time, based on a TED talk by renowned scientist Alan Lightman, who describes a couple different types of time: “The ancient Romans also distinguished between two different kinds of time: negotium and otium. Negotium was time spent at work and duty. Business time. Otium was leisure time, time spent away from the job. Otium was time for reflection, reading, writing, thinking, philosophizing, self-examination.” 

Yet lest anyone confuse contemplation with complacency, author Robert Walser defends us creative types by clarifying:“In a word, by thinking, pondering, drilling, digging, speculating, writing, investigating, researching, and walking, I earn my daily bread with as much sweat on my brow as anybody.” It is this very type of cerebral lifestyle that originally motivated me to become more of a minimalist in order to experience it on a daily basis. 

As Linda and I are both big readers, one of our favorite activities is reading together during what we call “library evenings.” If we come upon a passage that we feel might interest the other we share from our reading and thus double our pleasure. And sometimes we even put down our books and pursue another pleasurable pastime together!    

Necessary Endings

With this year drawing to a close I thought it only fitting to share some of my gleanings from a life-changing book I just read titled Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward by Dr. Henry Cloud. As a result of it, I whittled my contact list to fit what has become known as Dunbar’s number, so named for the anthropologist who identified it and which states that people can juggle only about 150 relationships at a time. 

Suffice it to say that the good in our relational lives cannot begin until the bad ends. Yet people generally struggle with how to properly end relationships. As Cloud points out, with the closure of a relationship there is a big difference between hurt and harm. “We all hurt sometimes in facing hard truths, but it makes us grow…Harm is when you damage someone. Facing reality is usually not a damaging experience, even though it can hurt.” 

Another gem I garnered from the book has to do with misunderstood loyalty. According to Cloud, “It is just one of the truths about life: sometimes we need to do something for ourselves or our business that is not good for someone else, at least not in the short term.” And as adults we need to learn to communicate: “I am not doing this ‘to you.’ I am doing it ‘for me.’” Again, there is a big difference here. 

Part of my winnowing process this year with relationships in my life involved setting boundaries with some and cutting ties with others. I even parted ways with a longtime client who acted increasingly dysfunctional. With Linda and I now both in our 50’s life has become too short to tolerate nonsense either of a personal or professional variety. As the above photo illustrates, a setting sun can be beautiful but also a reminder that time is winding down.    

It is also worth noting here that this is my 300th post in about 15 years of blogging, which works out to 20 substantial essays per year and at an average of 400 words per post it means I have written more than 120,000 words or enough for a 480-page book. So, I am thinking of compiling the cream of the crop into one concise document for sale as an e-book. And I’d love to get your feedback in order to gauge overall support of such a project!

The Road Less Traveled

One of my favorite poems is The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. As he waxes so eloquently: “I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” The proverbial “road less traveled” is one that Linda and I are very familiar with. After all, it is the one that led us, two born-and-bred southerners, here to the remote coast of Maine. 

With winter bearing down upon us, and a couple of early storms already under our belts this season, some loved ones undoubtedly question our sanity, but for us it is a time of resting, reading, and reflecting. As the above photo attests, the weather is no respecter of structures, even our beloved lighthouse, which temporarily lost power during the area’s first storm. Our power in the keeper’s house was out for less than a day and so we simply lit some candles and retreated to olden times. 

With no backup generator available (yet), and a well and septic system, no power means no water or sewer for us, so we plan our lives around the weather forecast to try and minimize any disruptions. And speaking of minimizing, our entire minimalist journey has by definition been a countercultural one, as we have traded some modern conveniences for a more unconventional route to tranquility. 

As regular readers know, another one of our tradeoffs has been the exchange of our large library of books for less mediated experiences. Rather than merely reading about the exploits of others we have chosen to experience them for ourselves. As author Mark Boyle writes in The Way Home: Tales From a Life Without Technology, “Many years ago, I decided that instead of spending my life making a living, I wanted to make living my life.” 

And on the topic of life well lived, a variation of the statement is the tag line for Maine Homes magazine, which we were featured in recently here. Suffice it to say that the road less traveled can lead us to the very destination of our dreams if we are willing to follow where it leads. So, as yet another year draws to a close, embrace an attitude of adventure, with a willingness to explore what lies around the bend. 

Life Is A Gas, And Then It Passes

Now, lest you think me crass for my title of this post, let me assure you that I am simply paraphrasing a verse from the Bible. As James 4:14 reminds us, “For what is your life? It is even a vapor [gas] that appears for a little time and then vanishes [passes] away” [emphases mine]. And it is the literal truth, folks. 

Indeed, as a minister I once preached a message with this title and incorporated some special effects. No, not any noise makers. I simply had the ushers cut off the lights and I lit a match, letting it burn briefly before blowing it out. And then I added, that represents your life, so how are you going to live? In the vast span of eternity, our lives are very brief indeed. But that is what gives them such value. Thus, it matters how we live.

Yet in addition to life being priceless, another interpretation of “gas” means fun. While life is not necessarily meant to be a joy ride from start to finish, we are intended to enjoy it nonetheless. I even submit that if you are not experiencing joy on your journey then you might be taking it too seriously. If so, try to mix a little fun into your days. As George Carlin reputedly said, “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away.”

Regular readers are by now well aware of my affinity for quotes and I could not resist sharing a couple more given the flame theme of this post as pictured above. It was George Bernard Shaw who stated, “I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is a sort of splendid torch, which I’ve got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

And last but by no means least, here is one of my all-time favorite quotes, and by yet another George, by George, one George MacDonald: “When I no more can stir my soul to move, and life is but the ashes of a fire; when I can but remember that my heart once used to live and love, long and aspire—awake in me…boundless desire.” Here is to life!

This Simple, Extraordinary Life

I am writing this post to implore you, my friends, to not postpone your lives any longer, for we have no promises about tomorrow. “If I miss the ordinary—waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen—I may just miss my life,” writes author Dani Shapiro in Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life. Or, as John Lennon reportedly said, “Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.” 

And as poet Robert Hastings wrote in The Station, “‘Relish the moment’ is a good motto, especially when coupled with Psalm 118:24: “This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” It isn’t the burdens of today that drive men mad. Rather, it is regret over yesterday or fear of tomorrow. Regret and fear are twin thieves who would rob us of today.” I don’t know about you but I am not allowing either thief to steal my life from me.

I’ve owned a red convertible, lived at a lighthouse, and traveled to Africa. I’ve loved one woman my entire adult life and she has returned the favor. I call, email, and text people I care about and communicate it to them while it counts. In other words, I aim to live life so that when it ends I am able to die without regrets. I have lost one of my parents and both of my wife’s parents in the last few years and it has reinforced my core conviction of loving people while I can. 

And when Linda and I live someplace we intentionally enjoy living there by thoroughly experiencing the area so that when it comes time to leave, we never regret not having done so. As with the rest of our lives, we strive to realize the potential of a time and place instead of merely daydreaming about it. While others wonder about places, we wander to experience them. We frequently hear from local friends that we share sites with them they had not even experienced.

We’ve been blessed to live in some of the most desirable places in all of America, including Orlando, Tulsa, Savannah, Nashville, and New England. But it was not due to job transfers; we moved to each without jobs because we wanted to live in such places. And we have done it all on a shoestring budget, I might add. So, forgive me if I wince as others whine about not being able to pursue their dreams. We all do what we want to every day; it is simply a matter of willingness.

I hope this post does not come off preachy as much as it is a passionate plea to wake up from your daydreams and “seize the day,” as the saying goes. None of us are guaranteed another day. I’ve arrived alive at 55 but I have friends who have suffered debilitating illnesses or even died young and it always reminds me to cherish each blessed day I have been given. So, I pray that each of us is mindful of our once-in-a-lifetime chance to cherish this simple, extraordinary life. 

The Brevity of Life

With the new year underway, lately I have been thinking about the brevity of life. I know this is a deep thought, but the older I get the shorter life seems (I have an upcoming birthday). Correspondingly, life is too short to try fooling ourselves otherwise. So, what are we to do with this realization? I am speaking for myself here, but it naturally makes me want to make the most of my time left here on earth.

One of the practical steps I am taking includes quitting unfruitful activities in favor of fruitful ones, such as giving myself permission to stop reading books that bore me. I kept renewing one library book by a renowned author over and over but I just could not get through it so I finally turned it in and moved on to another title. As they say, so many books, so little time.

Not to be melodramatic, but I have been experiencing some health challenges that got me thinking of how I would live differently if I knew this were my last year alive. Suffice it to say, nothing clears the cobwebs of one’s consciousness like mulling over your own mortality. And a large part of simplifying life involves identifying what works for us and what does not.

Another factor that contributes significantly to our overall quality of life is the relationships we enjoy with other people. Just this morning I hosted a friend for coffee and pastries, over which we explored several meaningful issues in our lives, all in the refreshingly unhurried atmosphere of a winter morning here on the coast of Maine. And one key factor was that we both kept technology at bay during our hour and a half together.

So on that note, allow me to suggest that the greatest gift you can give another person is your undivided attention. And for the love of God, make it one of your new year’s resolutions to connect and communicate regularly with your loved ones. I have a family member who, no matter how many hints I drop about it, fails to appreciate this simple gesture.

In this age of iPhones and the like, none of us has any excuse for not reaching out and staying in touch with one another. Find out people’s preferred mode of communication, whether calls, emails, texts, etc., and contact them. LIFE IS SHORT. And if you live like you were dying, you’ll save yourself a ton of heartache and regret one day. 

The Value of Time

People say that time is our only finite, nonrenewable resource but usually act as if the opposite is true. The reality is that if we really believed our time here on earth was limited we would live very different lives. I have personally had a close call with death and it reminded me how fragile this life can be. Consequently, I make it my mission to live in the present moment and as Thoreau said, “suck out all the marrow of life.”

Thoreau’s friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his Essays: “[Thoreau] lived for the day, not cumbered and mortified by his memory. If he brought you yesterday a new proposition, he would bring you today another not less revolutionary. A very industrious man, and setting, like all highly organized men, a high value on his time, he seemed the only man of leisure in town, always ready for any excursion that promised well, or for conversation prolonged into late hours.”

Seneca was a Stoic philosopher and another proponent of optimizing our lives. As Damon Young writes in his compelling book Distraction, “For Seneca, the first necessity was free time, or what the Romans called ‘otium.’ But the next obligation was to avoid wasting it. In his sparkling little essay ‘On the Shortness of Life,’ Seneca lambasted those who whined about mortality while frittering away their days. For him, there was plenty of time to achieve anything a good man might long for. All a happy and long life needed was clarity, diligence and intelligence—to be clear about what we want and firm and straightforward in getting it.”

On this point, it is also helpful to meditate on Acts 17:26, a powerful scripture from The Message about our relationship to time: “God made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God.” All too often, the human race tries desperately to live up to its name. So it helps to remember that God created us as human beings not human doings. The more life means to us the better we will value our time. After all, life is less about managing an already busy schedule than it is about slowing down long enough to savor the journey.

The Portfolio Life

It is no secret to regular readers that I am a fan of Henry David Thoreau. And the other day I uncovered more interesting tidbits about my fellow minimalist writer. I read that he purposely diversified his livelihood in pursuit of what he considered his primary calling, that of a writer. And he wrote expressly to share his philosophy of simpler living principles.

As I stated several posts ago, one of the keys to living the artisan life is to create a portfolio of skills and tools that allow you to make a living as well as a life. As it turns out, Thoreau was practically the poster boy for such a lifestyle, as he was prone to juggling multiple gigs.

For example, here is a list of self-described avocations for Thoreau: schoolmaster, tutor, surveyor, mason, gardener, farmer, house-painter, carpenter, day-laborer, abolitionist, pencil-maker, lecturer, naturalist, and writer. Yet as a young man Thoreau changed his given name from his birth name of David Henry Thoreau to identify his true vocation and signify his thinking of himself as a new man: a writer.

And Thoreau mentor and neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests here what his friend’s life was ultimately about: “[Thoreau] declined to give up his large ambition of knowledge and action for any narrow craft or profession, aiming at a much more comprehensive calling, the art of living well.”

Besides his Walden Pond experiment outside of his native Concord, Massachusetts, Thoreau also made several visits to Cape Cod and the Maine Woods, chronicling his adventures in books by the same names. And not altogether coincidentally, these are places I have come to call home over time. As for my listing of jobs through the years, it is a mixture also: landscaper, concierge, telemarketer, publicist, pastor, chaplain, teacher, consultant, speaker, editor, and writer. So what are your calling cards?

The Art of Life

This is a somewhat unorthodox posting. With it I hope to convey a sense of what helped propel my wife and I on our unconventional journey of living large with less. To say it has turned out even better than we anticipated would be an understatement as it has allowed us to explore alternative ways of being.

For example, I am reminded of an incident during our period of home ownership. My brother and I were chatting on the phone about some painting I needed to do but had postponed due to my writing and he quipped, “So put down your pen and pick up the paintbrush.” And that, in so many words, is the type of trade-off I tired of making. As Ralph Waldo Emerson famously remarked, “The writer shall not dig.” Or paint or mow.

Suffice it to say that the joys of home ownership did not include manual labor for me. I maintained the lawn for exercise until our mower died after several years and to prevent the yard from going to pot I hired a guy to take care of it until we sold our house. What I yearned to do was “put down the paintbrush and pick up my pen” and so I did.  

While I’ve written hundreds of articles, finishing a book as escaped me to date. Yet I was thinking the other day that my greatest creative act is the art of my life. As Henry David Thoreau said, “To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.” And it was famed black belt Bruce Lee who said: “I have always been a martial artist by choice, an actor by profession, but above all, am actualizing myself to be an artist of life.”

Call me a philosopher poet but the creative life has always appealed to me and this quote from Pierre Bonnard really hits home: “What attracted me was less art itself than the artist’s life and all that it meant for me: the idea of creativity and freedom of expression and action. I had been attracted to painting and drawing for a long time, but it was not an irresistible passion; what I wanted, at all costs, was to escape the monotony of life.”

And artist J. Stone reiterates the point: “The most visible creators I know of are those artists whose medium is life itself, the ones who express the inexpressible. They neither paint nor sculpt—their medium is being. Whatever their presence touches has increased life. They see and don’t have to draw. They are the artists of being alive.” I don’t know about you, but I want to be an artist of being alive!

Life Is But a Dream

We may be landlocked here in Middle Tennessee, but I am in a nautical frame of mind, as Linda and I are planning our upcoming vacation to the New England coast, our very favorite place to visit. And while I was preparing this post I was reminded of the nursery school rhyme we all learned as children: “Row, row, row your boat, Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.”

Not all of life is dreamy, of course, but what I’d like to think this rhyme is about is adopting a merrier attitude as we row our boat called life. And one way to travel “gently down the stream,” as the song says, is to pack lightly. Paula Wallace, co-founder of the Savannah College of Art and Design, puts it this way: “The allure of travel lies in the freedom of a suitcase—taking only what one needs and leaving room for serendipity.”

And in her book Simplify Your Life: 100 Ways to Slow Down and Enjoy the Things That Really Matter author Elaine St. James shares this fun quote attributed to the cleverly named Jerome Klapka Jerome: “Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink, for thirst is a dangerous thing.”

Personally, I could do without the cat and dog, or even the pipes, but I agree with the rest of Jerome’s pithy perspective. The lighter we travel through life, the less baggage we need to lug with us. By keeping it simple, we save ourselves the trouble of toting more than we need on our journey, which any veteran traveller will tell you is the key to enjoying the trip from here to there. Remember, hearses are the great equalizer between the haves and the have-nots. Living lightly on earth helps prepare us for the hereafter.

Unplugging to Reconnect

Author Alain de Botton said, “Journeys are the midwives of thought.” My wife and I recently returned from a roadtrip to Florida during which we saw our families and thawed out at the beach, and it got me thinking. I turned 50 earlier this year and, while I turned down an AARP membership, I am mindful of my stage in life and that none of us is getting any younger, no matter how hard we try to maintain our youth.

On our journey south, we had the pleasure of visiting not only with family but also with several friends that we hadn’t seen in the year since we last visited Florida. Most are our age or older and some had experienced health issues during that time, even severe ones. My dad turned 90 at the end of last year and has had his challenges, including surgery to remove a cancerous growth. All in all, our loved ones are fine, but this life is temporary.

The other day I saw a poster that captured this very sentiment: “All that we called our own, as it turns out, was borrowed.” Not only are our lives not our own yet gifts from our Maker, but all of our stuff is on loan also. Yes, all of the stuff that we strive so hard to obtain, maintain and retain…it is all temporary, people. The only thing that remains after this life is over is our spiritual being and our relationships with other people. That is it!

As I am writing this on the one-year anniversary of my mother-in-law’s passing, I can’t help reflecting on her godly heritage and the gracious gift she gave me in the guise of her daughter. I am grateful to God for her and glad that she is enjoying her eternal reward. As for me, I enjoyed a special time visiting with my mother the other day, a chat into the late evening as a result of my inadvertently unplugging a cable, wiping out the television.

To place this event in its proper perspective, it is important to understand that for talking to replace television in my parents’ household practically takes an act of God, so it was no minor miracle that my mother and I had the opportunity to catch up with one another and discuss things that would never have arisen if the television had been operating. Perhaps the moral of the story is that we must unplug in order to reconnect with what matters.

Living a Legacy

I am reading a book about the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and it appears that he qualifies for the billionaire bad boy club by sharing the unenviable trait of being both a genius and a jerk. I hesitate to use such strong language but I am fed up with reading the life stories of so called “successful” businessmen who bullied their way to the top while leaving a path of destroyed relationships in their wake.

Bezos didn’t kick a partner to the curb like Steve Jobs of Apple did with Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates of Microsoft did with Paul Allen but he has apparently alienated scores of others who helped get Amazon off the ground while making billions in the process of laughing [his infamous laugh] all the way to the bank. But what he and his ilk don’t realize is theirs is not the last laugh. The lives we leave behind determine our legacy so how we live is what matters. It is the foolish that think it better to be feared than loved.

In full disclosure, I am a big fan of Apple products and actually cried the day Steve Jobs died, but it grieved me more to read in his official biography how poorly he treated people. And the first software I got for my Apple computer was Microsoft’s Office for Mac but I find it profoundly ironic that Bill Gates is now globetrotting as a philanthropist after helping himself to Apple technology that he later used to monopolize the software industry. I also happen to be a fan of Amazon and hope Jeff Bezos learns to live a legacy worth leaving before it is too late.