“I don’t regret the way I did life. I like the stories I am able to tell.” - an eighty-three year old, terminally ill gentleman

The above quote is from a story I read last weekend in The Simple Life. The elderly man told the author stories about his life, from the Great Depression onward. And after all the stories about the struggles, joys, pains, and thrills, that was his proclaimation over it all.

When I’m 83 years old, I want to be satisfied with the way I lived my life, and enjoy telling my story to others. This started me thinking about something else, too… at the end of my life, the stories are really all that’s left.

When we gather with your family at holidays like the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, or Christmas, do we reminisce about how much money you made way back when, how much time you volunteered, what your quarterly sales numbers were back in 1983? No, all that has faded into oblivion – it’s meaningless, irrelevant information. The conversation is about something hilarious that John said when he was three, or how you took your cousins “snipe hunting.”

All that’s left is story. Read the rest of this entry »

I couldn’t help but think of my mom after I read Luke’s post last week; “Learn Simplicity from the Old Folks.” My mom passed away several years ago shortly before her 88th birthday. At the time, she was living in a one bedroom one bath apartment with a postage stamp size living room and a kitchen so small you could stand in the center and touch the sink, refrigerator, and stove without moving. My mom, who lived alone, never went without any of the basic things she needed due to frugal living on her part, a modest social security income and another very small income source each month. My brother and I also helped out when she had some extraordinary expenses; hearing aids, a new kitchen table, bedding, a used car. She valued her independence and although she acknowledged she felt lonely at times, she wanted to stay in the city she had been in for the past 50 years of her life rather than take us up on our invitation to move closer to one of her kids who now both lived almost five hours away. After all, her church was literally across the street and most of her friends that she had known for years that were still alive lived just a few miles away!

Photo by Flickr user Jamelah

There were times when I would feel guilty because at the time, I was living in a 1,700 square foot three bedroom, two bath home with a fireplace and a two car garage. It was a modest house, but still so much larger than what my mom was living in and I had so much more stuff including a larger TV, a good stereo system, an amazing collection of music, a home office with all of the equipment, more furniture, newer cars, a nice deck out back and a nice big, wooded front and backyard. With all of that, I felt bad because when I came to visit my mom, she would insist that I sleep in her bedroom while she slept on the small roll-out love seat in the living room. When I say small roll-out love seat, I mean small! It was about 3 feet wide with a special mattress that was less than the size of a twin bed. “She has so little,” I would think.

But I realized (when I could let some of the guilt go) that I envied her life in many ways. Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine retro seventies modernist furniture. Very big, very square. Upholstery? Faux fur. Equally big and square is the coffee table that sits in front of the sofa, with rounded corners made of faux wood. A creamy white monstrous family Bible sits in the middle. Bulbous green glass lamps illuminate the room, revealing the bright green shag carpet on the floor… and the wall.

This, my friends, is not just a story, it’s a description of my landlord’s apartment. She’s in her eighties , and she’s been living here and renting out these one bedroom apartments for many years. She has no interest in remodeling anything. She’s satisfied with the way things are. She’s content. (And while I was writing this post, she brought me some chocolate pecan clusters… now I’m content! ;-)

Joshua Becker at becomingminimalist wrote a great post on contentment last week, and it got me thinking: who do I know that’s content with life, and what can I learn from them? And that’s when it hit me: old people! (NOTE: That was a figure of speech, I was not actually assaulted by any elderly person!)

We live in a western culture that absolutely devalues older people, and it makes me sick. We don’t want to listen to their incredible wisdom because “things have changed.” Granted, technology has certainly changed some things, it’s also true that some things never change. There is nothing new underneath the sun.

For instance, Brian Clark from Copyblogger tweeted this brilliant statement a few weeks ago: “If you want to learn social media, learn to be social. The medium is irrelevant.” Soooo true. And guess what? Older folks can teach you a lot about how to genuinely be sociable - especially my generation, which, as a whole, is inept at real life social interaction.

Now back to this idea of contentment: I’ll bet you know, or have known, some older people in your life that are perfectly content with what they have right now. If they didn’t purchase another new thing the rest of their lives, it would not affect their happiness one bit.

I love people like that. That’s the place I want to be, where my joy and passion doesn’t emanate from what I own or don’t own, but from my relationships and the difference I’m making in people’s lives. Who better to show me how to get there than someone who has already made the journey?

If you follow simplifi.de on Twitter (and please do!), then you know that I have been tweeting quotes from a guy named Charles Wagner a lot lately. That’s because I have been reading his book called, “The Simple Life”, and it is the single best book I have read on simplicity. Every page has something to apply to my life today. (A review is forthcoming on simplifi.de)

Oh yeah, Charles Wagner was born in 1852, and The Simple Life was published in 1904.

Every generation struggles with finding simplicity in the midst of chaos. And I’ll bet if you look hard enough, you can find someone around you from the previous generation who has succeeded. Go visit them as soon as you can. Sit with them on their couch, that couch that has probably been in and out of style 3 times already. Sit down, shut up, and just listen. Ask them questions. Be humble. Learn how they found peace in the midst of turmoil, simplicity in the middle of an increasingly complicated world.

We would love it if you would share your thoughts about this post… tell us about the person that came to mind when you were reading this post, and how they live(d) a simple life!

It’s Valentine’s weekend, and along with thousands of other people right now, I’m reflecting on the relationships I have with those I love. In this complicated world with its increasing demands on our time and energy, my marriage and relationships can either feel like just another thing to “manage” or can feel like an oasis; a place of refuge and refreshment. Now, depending on what stage of life you are in, you may define that “oasis” differently. I’m well into middle age, so I know that it doesn’t look and feel like a spa or a resort and certainly not the image that romance novels and Hollywood love stories depict. Read the rest of this entry »