Simplicity, simplicity. If I really practiced it, I would have said it once.
I’m trying to reduce the clutter in my life, mostly because I’m constantly stubbing my toes on it, but also because people say it helps you focus on the important things.
It’s important to me not to stub my toes, so I’ve donated or thrown away everything I own that I don’t need.
Outside are my presidential bobbleheads, my chess set with the missing pieces, and my refrigerator.
If you think about it, you technically don’t need a refrigerator. People have been practicing simplicity long before the discovery of food poisoning.
One of the greatest pioneers of simplicity did not have a refrigerator. He also did not have electricity, but that is beside the point.
Ralph “Waldo” Emerson was a big name in the simpler times, before “simpler times” were an idea.
He was best known as an essayist. He probably could have been successful as a talk show host, but television had not yet been invented at that time.
In one of his remarkable essays, “Nature,” he wrote that the goal of everyone should be to become a transparent eyeball.
Of course, people didn’t understand that back then. They didn’t understand anything about electricity either, but that’s secondary.
“Ralph, I thought this essay was about nature,” said Emerson’s contemporary Henry David Thoreau (or something like that). “Where does the transparent eyeball thing come in?”
At this point, Emerson probably looked at him with two angry eyes.
“People might think you’re selling glass eyes or something,” Thoreau continued (and I think he was right). “You have to put it more simply.”
“You are an orator,” replied Emerson (or so I was told). “Nobody can even spell your last name.”
Despite the conflict between the two, they managed to get along long enough to start an entire movement to restore connection with nature.
They also wrote about 827 complicated essays that this author had to read in high school. The only nature I saw at that time was in National Geographic.
Yet the idea of simplicity remains popular. In Emerson’s day, people who wanted a simpler life were called transcendentalists. More recently, they have been called Marie Kondo fanatics.
They probably have different names now, but if you look for them, you’ll find them.
This is at least the case if you don’t own so many things that you are no longer able to locate other people via those things.
I haven’t reached the point where I can’t find my fellow human beings among my things, but I have mixed feelings about returning to nature.
After all, nature is more or less lacking in everything pleasant. There are no comfortable armchairs. No remote-controlled cars. Not a single presidential bobblehead.
On the other hand, without all that, there are a lot fewer things to stub your toes on.
So maybe Emerson was right. Maybe a transparent eyeball simply means you can see the world more clearly without anything clouding your vision.
Or it could mean you need a new refrigerator. People think funny when they eat bad food, you know.
Alexandra Paskhaver is a software developer and writer. Both jobs require knowing where to put semicolons, but she’s never quite figured it out. For more information, see her website at https://apaskhaver.github.io.
