THE SIMPLE LIFE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXI, Issue 213, 22 August 1931, Page 5

THE SIMPLE LIFE

IS IT PREFERABLE ?

(By

“LECTOR.”)

There are two ways of increasing the value of a fraction: you can either make the numerator bigger or you can make the denominator smaller. In like manner, it has been said, there are two modes of procedure in the search for human happiness: you can either increase your possessions or you can reduce your wants. Modern invention and scientific progress have made it possible for the ordinary man to have greater material possessions than ever before, and daily, almost hourly, life is becoming more complex. Do these complexities, do these increases of common scientific benefits, make for or against happiness?

The other clay, while looking through some old scrap-books, the writer came across one of bis own youthful efforts in the following terms: Oh, I long for a beautiful island, To sit ’neath the palms on the shore Where the ANNI shall cease to LABUNTUR And the TEMPUS shall FUGIT no more. It is easy to see that that was written by a schoolboy in arms against the multiplication of complexities. And not long ago, a distinguished public man, speaking in Hastings, indicated the pure joys that lie in the simple life, wherein a man need pay no attention to the clamourings of convention or to babble of the market place, but where, comfortable in old elpthes and on his own bit of ground, he can find close to the heart of Nature all the happiness he needs. He agreed with Wordsworth that we may waste our powers in getting and spending A COMMON LONGING. Most of us, even although we have to perform our daily tasks in quick time to the “double, double beat of the thundering drums’’ of industry and commerce, z have those moments, sure if seldom, when we yearn back for the quiet and peace of an “impulse, from a vernal wood” and the simple pleasures that are scattered amid mountains, fields and streams. Some of the world’s greatest stories centre round this theme, picturing the quiet beginning of life, the growing complexities, the reaction against them, and the return to the simplicities, and some of t'ne world’s greatest music (think of the familiar opening overture to “Tannhauser”) has been built upon the same theme. The German philosopher Hegel built his whole theory within the framework of three words that indicate simplicity, complexity, and back to simplicity again, although with new experience. That last clause is worth noting, for there are different kinds of simple life. There is the thoughtless, ignorant, almost emotionless stolidity of the type of peasant who has never known or desired or even imagined a more complex existence, and there is the conscious and deliberate stripping away of unnecessary and use-

less burdens and the quiet choosing of a simpler way of life, so that its advantages are the more greatly appreciated because they can be contrasted with other experiences. IS IT PRACTICABLE? .. The question is, however, whether the simple life is practicable, however desirable it may be. Another German philosopher once said that the best way to test the value of a personal policy is to consider what would happen if everyone pursued it. If everybody went in for the simplicities, who would look after the things that are not so simple? Even your comfortable old togs, boots, and little things like pepper and salt and mustard, without which the simple life would lose some of its savour, involve machinery, organisation, shipping, mining, chemistry, trades unions and all the rest of it. This simple life is a complex affair after all. It is not really practicable “for all the people all the time.” Nevertheless, it may be quite feasible for all the people some of the time, and that may be enough to go on with. USE OF LEISURE. We all have leisure of some sort, and if our life is to be balanced, leisure should be spent in ways as far apart as possible from those of the ordinary hours, always provided that those ways are wholesome, of course. The greatest enjoyments will be found in the simplest ways. HOLIDAYS. When the holiday season comes, it may be a good idea to give the simple life idea a try out. Many return from a vacation more fatigued than when they set out. They have crammed a great deal of excitement and experience into a space of time insufficient to hold them, and have used up more nervous energy during the annual fortnight or whatever it may be, than would have been necessary for the needs of their ordinary work. Experience of the simplicities gained by a real trial of them may be found to co 1 our one’s taste in the days that follow in regard to the normal use of leisure hours. And so, next time, what about a “bed in the bush with stars to see” and the regaining of full strength and vigour by a course of Nature’s own treatment of exercise, fresh air and sunshine?