Just Baggage Enough

Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough. - Charles Dudley Warner in the Zen Calendar (August 13, 2006).

Day 174. I found fourteen cents during the first block of my walk this evening. Walking is much more lucrative than cycling. It is inadvisable to watch for both coins and potholes while pedaling the streets of Oklahoma. There are precious few of the former and dangerously many of the latter.

I have nothing to say tonight, and I am strangely okay with that. A rare spell of contentment has enveloped me, and I'm reluctant to sway my equilibrium. Simplicity wafted in and out of my thoughts while I walked. It feels harmonious to distill my life to work, cycling, blog, and meditation. Lather, rinse, repeat. Throw in a little parenting now and then, but only when asked.

The distillation of a complex life to a simplistic one is a much more intricate process than a decade or so ago. On a daily basis, I witness my clients and friends struggle with the core question of what to keep and what to keep at bay. There are so many things to say no to. With clients who are about 30 and younger, I love to point out the ways culture assisted with perimeters when I was a girl. There were only four TV stations, and they went off the air at midnight on week nights (remember the test pattern symbol and the "ant races?") and - I can't recall - one or two a.m. on the weekends. There were very few stores that stayed open 24 hours, and even fewer that opened on Sundays. Etiquette dictated that you didn't make social phone calls after nine or ten p.m. No computers, no videos to rent or download, no electronic games, less than half the population of our present planet. It was quiet at night. Our human hearts beat in closer rhythm to other living things.

I have not observed that a busier life begets happiness. We all know this is so, yet so few of us act with the necessary rigor to create and sustain a simpler way of being. On a daily basis, zazen provides me with an indisputable experience of contentment with less. I am shedding baggage like the airlines charging exorbitant fees per suitcase. My baggage has been reduced to a dictionary, thesaurus, cushion and bike. I'll also keep this fossil of a computer. At least for six more months.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc