It’s now been three years since I started this channel, and one year of a video every day, one year of a video every week, one year of a video every month, and now going down to one video every quarter. So when I started this, I was motivated by this idea that I was not living my life correctly. I wasn’t making use of the life that I had. Just sort of passively drifting through life, without really using this opportunity to the best that I could. And I found I was really just wasting time, and I had enough of doing that. So I began this whole journey of self-development, of trying to improve my life, improve my habits, improve myself, and that’s been going on ever since.
But what I’ve come to after this time is really focusing on simplicity and minimalism at the heart of so many things. There isn’t really anything that I feel needs to be achieved in some kind of grand way, like I need to, like achieving greatness or something. I think that’s something for other people to decide. The pursuit of becoming great: well, depends how you define greatness. What sort of achievements are necessary? Well, there’s all sorts of things that could be great to achieve, and I think all of us should make some effort to make the world a better place. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be in some kind of grand achievement. And really, I just want to live a good life. And I think what I see now is that it comes down to something very simple. Life, at its core, is a very simple thing. Of course there’s the endless details, subtleties, complexity of the universe we live in, but the simple foundation of living a good life, it’s a very basic kind of minimal thing, and it doesn’t, I believe, require us to really have any special changing ourselves, developing ourselves, to become a certain ideal. In a way that’s true, but in a way it’s also not necessary to really change ourselves. Because we already are what we are. We already are good. We are these beings that have this chance to exist and live in this world and experience life, and I think we don’t need to add too much onto it. I think the basics of life are more than enough for what we need. And so I see work to me has become less about self-development, changing myself, becoming better, even though that’s still continuing. I see that there’s a sort of a basic core of simply being myself, simply being a being, simply living in the most basic, simple way, almost even too simple for words, just living life.
And the work is all around the distractions against that. It’s about clearing out all the complications and distractions and interferences that get in the way of that simple life, so that the task really becomes a defensive one. It’s like life itself, I don’t need to make a special effort. The special effort comes in in order to defend against all the interferences that get in the way of it, things from outside. Influence: I’m being influenced to have a certain mindset, have a certain opinion, to want certain things and not want other things. All these influences that get in the way of simply living a good life. Which I believe comes down to having a good spiritual connection with the universe, what might be called God, and having love with family and friends, having health, having wealth, which even in the most basic way, simply enough material resources to meet our basic needs, and then some fun, simply having fun and enjoying our chance to exist in this universe. And these are the basic things we need. And yeah, they do take some work to get, but it’s something that I think doesn’t require some kind of grand quest in a way. The quest is really to find that heart of simplicity, to find that simple place, and then to defend against, well, there is a lot of complication, a lot of outside influence, interference in the world, and defending what we have, and defending our loved ones and our community: that’s where the work is. But life itself is a simple thing.
So in that sense, self-development, I see it as kind of a phase of a transformation, from going from someone who is very passive and has no clear vision or direction to becoming someone who is simply very clear about his vision for life. And that may be the heart of the self-development that I need. And beyond that, it may just be the continuing, ongoing efforts to improve that, to make that foundation, that simple foundation, stronger. So I hope you’ve found benefit through all these videos, and I will be back in a quarter. So have a happy season.
#defendsimplicity #simpleliving #minimalistliving