Life does not have to be complicated.
It can be lived in the simplest of ways.
We can choose to focus on the basics.
Good health, good relationships, and good community.
Having a comfortable life is not enough once we achieve it.
We have to have more.
More money, more resources, more prestige.
Having a good relationship is not enough for us after many years.
We look for a better partner, a younger partner, or a more well off partner.
Living with people we like can become not enough either.
There is nothing wrong with wanting a better life.
But do we recognize a truly better life is?
What good is being wealthy if we have to sacrifice our health to get it?
How does it serve us to end a long term relationship with someone if we do not change and grow before we enter another one?
Perhaps we will, for a time.
Yet do we consider the implications of creating more of these things on the environment?
Do we ever consider the example we are setting by our actions for the younger generation?
We cannot keep cutting down the forests and polluting the oceans and still have a habitable planet for our grandchildren.
Instead of coming up with the next big App or climbing the corporate ladder to a position we hate, perhaps we could focus on ways to feed people who do not have enough food?
Or create new, more sustainable ways to travel?
The act of creation is something wonderful to engage in.
There are big challenges facing humanity today.
Ones that require a change in how we live and how we show up in the world.
Perhaps if we start with the requirement that whatever we engage in has to be something our descendants would be proud of, we would change not onyl what we do but how we do it.
There is a trend starting that is moving us away from consumerism.
Perhaps that is the best place to start.
Instead of being a part of something that is all about creating something more for people to buy, we can choose to be a part of something that is about finding a better way to live.
A better way to be.
Wealth may come to us.
Living a life where that is not the motivation but a happy byproduct if far more fulfilling.
So how can you live a life that is simpler and yet something to proud of?
~ Sam Liebowitz, The Conscious Consultant