What do I want more than stuff? What can make me stop buying things I don't really want? What can put me in a place where I no longer want material stuff because there is something I want and desire even more?
There is supposed to be a difference between voluntary simplicity and deprived simplicity and I am on a mission to find this balance. I am reading "Voluntary Simplicity" by Duane Elgin and I am only on page 33. I can usually thumb through books pretty quickly but this is one that needs to be absorbed. Thought about. Pondered. I find myself putting it down to think about a passage I just read. I love this book because it's not about living a simpler life and forcing yourself to meager conditions, it's about wanting a simpler life and being happy with the way things already are.
I read this quote today by Mahatma Gandhi: "If you were to give it up (referring to material stuff and money) in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only give up a thing when you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction for you."
So, what do I want more than stuff I can buy or acquire? I set the book down and thought about this. What do I want more than anything? And the answer came to me:
I want my husband home. I want him here with us. That's it. That's all I want. It's what he wants too. To be able to be home more and still provide us with our comfortable standard of simple living. To be a family, a team more than we already are. Less time at work, more time here.
Pretty simple and nothing material about it. Now Universe, I put it out there. Help me make it happen.
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