Heed This Advice. It’s Just One Word.

Simplicity May Be the Antidote to Many Things That Ail Us

By Peter Landry

On summer vacation this year, we stayed at a rustic cabin that had been in one family for years on a lake in Maine. It was decorated in a way that reflected the good times the family had had there summer after summer. It was a hodgepodge decor ranging from family photos to old beer trays to carved wooden shorebirds to a pair of signs from a defunct antiques store in a neighboring town.

It was an unmemorable collection, except for one thing that has stayed with me.

On an unfinished shelf in the first-floor bedroom was a handmade, framed message, embroidered on a scrap of white fabric and mounted on a maroon background decked with stars.

The message was a single word:

“Simplify.”

It was perfect for a getaway vacation escaping stress. But it is also perfect for all the weeks we are not on vacation.

It is perfect for every time we have to sort through the complications of life, grapple with competing interests, ration our time and balance our needs against our wants.

Simplify, the sign said. Simplify.

Screen out the negative in favor of the positive. Scale back your commitments. Streamline your schedule. Manage your goals and expectations. And most of all, resist making things more complicated than they need to be.

We cannot escape that we live in a crazy and complex world. We can do something about it in small but meaningful ways.

We can Simplify whenever and wherever we can. It is — simply — a path to peace.

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If you’ve read my columns even a few times, you know that simplicity is a subject dear to my heart. “Simple Pleasures” are right in the title, and I truly believe they are key to survival in the world we live in.

To test that philosophy, and heed the advice of the embroidery, my wife and I took a day trip last weekend to the Amish country in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County.

The Amish are legend for shying from modern conveniences and living the simple lives of their ancestors. They plough with horses, drive carriages, make their own clothing, favor shades of black and enlist entire families, including children, to work their farms and businesses.

They are simplicity personified, diligent beyond belief and grounded in their faith and communities.

No one in our modern day would want to go back to a world without electricity and automobiles. But it is refreshing, inspiring even, to witness it.

The Amish attract thousands of visitors a year with their efficient horses, straw hats and immaculate farms. Yet the beauty of their world isn’t the things you can see. It’s the things you can’t see.

It’s the spirit of their world, their commitment to community, the philosophy of simplicity that binds them together.

Sure, there are tourist traps like the hub town of Intercourse, and the Bird-in-Hand Farmers Market that feels more Jersey Shore than farm country with 3-D “artworks” and other kitsch. (My wife asked if I saw anything I wanted, and I blurted “The exit!”)

Yet once you get off the main roads, the clatter of today subsides and the simplicity of yesterday ascends.

You see toddlers, dressed in straw hats, pulled in a wagon to a community picnic at the volunteer fire company. Dooryard farm stands selling sweet corn, pickles and chow-chow vegetable relish. A place offering homemade soft ice cream, but “only on weekends.” A farm of gourds and pumpkins where a bearded father was teaching his barefoot daughter to add up the sale. A miniature horse farm, with miniature pull carts by the barn and laundry drying on a clothes line under the sun (solar power!).

Each of these families were busy but in a measured and quiet way. There was work to be done, but it was done in its own time. There was efficiency, but no hurrying. There was peace in the purpose.

On the road between farms, it was impossible to rush. Horse drawn carriages only move so fast and only in the rhythm of hoofbeats. The animals set the pace and even a brisk trot is slower than modern horsepower.

I was reminded of an experience I had when editing a weekly newspaper in Vermont.

The publisher came in with an editorial he had written, titled “Slow Down, and Live.” I feared a dreary sermon on traffic safety, but instead got something wonderful.

On his way to a business meeting, he had found himself behind a tractor pulling a hay wagon on a narrow two-lane road. Rather than lament that he’d be late, he slowed to the tractor’s pace. At a slower speed, he found he could look around and enjoy the scenery of upland mountains and lowland valley. It was the reason, he remembered, that he had moved to Vermont.

With a change of pace, he could absorb the beauty around him.

He was urging everyone else to do the same: “Slow Down, and Live.”

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Coming back from the Amish country, it struck me that we all need to slow down and live.

We may not want to live in the 19th century, but we can change our pace in the 21st. And our priorities.

We can ratchet back our commitments, loosen our schedules and make time for the things that give us pleasure. We can savor the people and places that are special to us. We can pare away the unessential to make way for the essential.

We can look for ways to make a complex world less confounding and be more mindful of our emotions. We can pause, breathe and observe.

We can, in a word, “Simplify.”

It may not happen quickly. But we’ll all be better for it.

TOP PHOTO: Inspiration in a framed, embroidery message. BELOW: Old-school, horse-drawn farming in Amish country. BOTTOM (1): An Amish family farm stand selling pumpkins, gourds and a message of thanks. BOTTOM (2): The charm of miniature horses and their mini-mini foals.