I sit out on the deck and feel the warmth of the late day sun and escape into the writings of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s book and relate to her description of the channeled whelk (shell) and the choice between simplicity and complication of life and agree with her that for the most part people choose complication. But if one accidently finds simplicity as I feel we have with our time in the small confines of the trailer, one finds serenity and a sense of peace of which I have never known… with all the distractions at home….always searching for the perfect balance between work, family, time for myself, exercise, errands.
She mentions that one collects material possessions not only for security, comfort or vanity, but for beauty as well. (in my case…shoes and handbags…hehe). After reading this chapter I have decided I need to find the perfect beach reminder to keep my life simplified.
She describes in this chapter the art of shedding. How little one can get along with, not how much. I think Bill and I can attest to this. As we didn’t bring much in the way of clothing or material possessions and I find myself clinging to little things the way the Street people I saw in California hung on to their shopping cart full of their life’s possessions. Probably the most precious things I look at every day are the photos of the children in our life that I have hanging all over the trailer (Nico, Payton, Mariah, Cole, Connor, Gabrielle), keepsakes that friends gave me before I left on this journey and my books/journal . We have the sporting equipment which is really our only form of entertainment as we have no television or electronics (most of the time) other than this brief stay in the beach house at which time my husband has become obsessed with wii and x box games that him and the other grown men play every night.
Someone asked Bill the other day what he had in the big van and he answered “everything I need to be happy and live my life are in this van” (hopefully I was inside at the time).
Deb