The Ultimate Way to Simplify Your Life

Have you ever wanted to simplify your life? and I mean beyond doing away with meaningless stresses, but also eliminating cell phones, computers, fights, clothes, gossip, etc etc. If you are really committed to making your life as simple as possible, you may want to consider following the footsteps of A.J. Jacobson, who lived according to every Biblical rule for one year as a Journalist in Manhattan. He wrote about his year in his book 'The Year of Living Biblically'. To get an idea of what he experienced, here are some of his 700 rules. From 'no gossip' to 'giving thanks', from 'No clothes made of two kind of stuff' to 'do not trim the sides of your beard', Jacobs attempted to follow every rule he could find in the Bible. Because the Bible is such an ancient text, it goes without saying that following it exactly will be no easy task, but if ancient times were so much simpler, wont following it make our life easier? and if so, if Thoreau wanted to simplify his life, why didnt he just resort to the Bible's rules? According to his website (I did not read the book), Jacob's year had several effects. In some ways it made him appreciate life more and to give thanks to things we all take for granted. But in other ways, it presented him with a new kind of stress of following God's law. Simple things such as finding a seat or buying clothes became stressful chores. So in some ways, life was simpler under the Bible, but in other ways it stressed his life to a new level. If someone had attempted this in Thoreau's time, however, the stress may have been a little toned down compared to today. Most clothes were one material, and certainly there would have been less peer pressure about shaving your beard. I would like to have seen Thoreau attempt this feat of such strict living, but from the sounds of it, it seems as if he achieved the same while living in the woods as Jacobs did after living a year Biblically. I get the impression from the authors' conclusions that they both appreciated the little things in life more and had a new sense of gratitude for a simple life. Perhaps living in solitude in the woods brought Thoreau as close to the Diving Spirit as Living Biblically brought Jacob's to God.

The Race for Stuff

While watching the clip from 'Far and Away' when the settlers are running and fighting for plots of land, I was reminded of the Wal-Mart employee in New York that was trampled to death among shoppers racing through the doors to get to sale items. The shoppers broke the doors off their hinges in the early morning hours of Friday to get inside the store to begin their blitz for on sale items. Everything from the race to claim property to the disorganization and the onslaught of people is the same. The only difference that stood out for me was the glorifying music playing in the background of 'far and away' as opposed to the chaos of the Wal-mart videos. But 'Far and Away' was a movie meant to glorify the 'American Destiny', and it is very likely that the actual land rush was very similar to the Wal-mart on Friday. The reason these two events so far apart in time are so similar may be that property and land have become something necessary to acquire in order to achieve happiness or success. In the 1800s land and the frontier was associated with a new start to life and, as shown in the Oklahoma land rush and 'Far and Away', everyone was competing and racing for their own plot of land. This race for stuff was repeated last Friday, demonstrating that the idea of moving west has translated into getting the latest and greatest thing. Even if it means trampling and killing a man to get to a set of shoes on sale.