INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Simplify. This is a book for anyone who, like me, is becoming increasingly disillusioned by the modern world and the direction in which it seems to be heading. It’s a book for people looking for answers… in a world that seems to offer us none. Where ‘always on’, mass smartphone addiction and social isolation seem to be the order of the day.
Modern life… it’s pretty nuts, huh? We are living in a time of way ‘too much’ and ‘too fast’. Life has gotten unnecessarily over-complicated and, quite frankly, is faster than many of us can handle. We are all feeling the strain these days. So, I’d like to put a question to you – WHY does the strain even need to be there? Could there be another way to live our lives? A simpler way?
Why do we let ourselves fall into these so-called ‘normal’ ways of living, doing, being, without even questioning them or looking for alternatives?
This ever-faster pace of life shows no sign of stopping. As we move deeper and deeper into the age of technology, most of us are ‘feeling the fry’. We are becoming overloaded with technology – endless (needless) emailing, social media scrolling, posting, tweeting, obsessing – and it’s burning a lot of us out. Technology, the very thing we bought into in the hope it would make life simpler, seems to be doing the exact opposite. We are overloaded, over-stimulated and over-saturated. Our brains are bursting at the seams. How long can we go on like this…? Something’s gotta give, right? Right.
The signs of an unhappy and groaning planet, struggling to support our endless need for ‘more, more, more’, are becoming increasingly obvious by the day. We are currently losing 150 species from our animal and plant kingdoms EVERY DAY, not to mention other huge problems like the melting ice caps, plastic-filled oceans and over-population.
So, what gives? It’s all getting a bit much, right? It certainly is. And yes, dear reader, you are not alone in having this response. Anyone who isn’t feeling somewhat like this in today’s world has, I’m sorry to say, got their head stuck firmly in the sand. Again, I’d like to ask,
Does life need to be this way? Our society, our world, our planet…
or
Could it be different?
If you had the choice, and knew how to do it, would you live differently?
The great paradox of these times is that most of us, while being hooked into a society and system that instructs us to live a certain way (the ‘norm’), are increasingly seeing and feeling that this way of living really isn’t serving us or the planet. And so we find ourselves stuck, frustrated, even angry, in the middle of this big mess, uncertain and unsure of how we can move forward. We know we must change. But we don’t know how. That is, until now. We are living in a serious time of great and needed change. This book is about how to change your life.
For me, the remedy for these over-complex times is to SIMPLIFY. It is time to cut out and strip back things we don’t need, things that don’t serve us. Collectively. En masse. Yeah!
Do we still have time to turn things around before it’s too late…? Of course we do. But we’ve gotta start right now. Because this is kinda urgent.
A NEW WAY
Could you be part of this ‘new way’? Are you bored of the old ways that are so clearly just not working for anyone any more? Aha, I thought so! Well, then, welcome aboard!
We are living in a time where many people are waking up and seeking alternatives to the mainstream. Many are searching for simplicity – wanting a simpler way of life to that which is generally on offer. Many of us want to live more from our hearts, rather than from our heads. We would like to live in a slower, simpler, truer, more balanced way, revolving less around the virtual world and more around the real world. We would like to live saner, healthier, better, happier lives, in community and connected to actual physical people, rather than their virtual versions! And, most importantly, more and more of us are feeling the call to live more closely connected to nature. To live in tune with the very Earth that we stand upon.
It is time to heed this call.
We are being called to do this because, as so many of us feel, the old ways of doing things just aren’t working for us – or for the environment – any more. Think of the overuse of plastics, our endless over-consumption, dominant and domineering governments, stress levels being at an all-time high. It is time to listen to the cries of the Earth, and to change. Basically, we don’t have much time left on this planet if we don’t. It is time to step up and change.
An increasing number of us are making a switch, from over-fast modern living to a slower, but surer, new way of being and doing in the world. The ‘Slow Living Movement’ is growing, and it’s growing fast. It’s something of a reaction to our unhealthy, modern, disconnected ways. From people cultivating, growing and sharing their own food, to schoolchildren marching for climate justice and an explosion in vegetarianism and veganism, a new, simpler, more Earth-centred path is being sought by many, many people. Are you one of them?
I encourage you wholeheartedly to try stepping into this ‘new way’, and to take inspiration from those who’ve gone before. I have been on this path for many years now, and I’m keen to share with you what it’s like and how you can do it too!
MY STORY
I have spent the last 15 years ‘unhooking’ my life from the more negative aspects of our modern society. I have explored living off-grid – without a phone or TV – spending time outside the ‘matrix’ and reconnecting with the land. I have learned that, above all, so much of what modern society tells us we need to have in our lives, we really don’t need at all.
As a child, my absolute idol was the famous explorer Sir Edmund Hillary – a relative of mine, and the first man to climb the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest. His story has always inspired me to aim high, live wild and not settle for ‘normal’ in my life.
I was brought up on a rural, organic farm. My reality was pretty much roaming endlessly in nature, making dens and mud-pies. So, you could say that I grew up with this ‘living simply’ thing – it’s in my roots. And I am very grateful to have grown up this way. My grandmother Annabelle, who I adored, taught me all about growing our own food. She was something of an expert. Her garden was immense: chock full of edible vegetable delights. My parents also grew our own food on the farm, which we children would pick fresh from the garden for dinner. These early experiences went in deep and gave me a good grounding in life. Twenty years on, living in a technology-dominated culture, I find myself increasingly revisiting these experiences and enjoying the sanity, peace and clarity of living simply.
LIVING OFF-GRID
So, five years ago, I decided to up sticks and go and explore living off-grid. In the Welsh mountains. In a field. In a yurt. I reached a point in my life where I had had enough! One morning I woke up – in my high-rent-endless-utility-bills-work-for-the-man-taxes-paying routine – and something just snapped. I remembered my childhood and a voice deep within me said, loudly, go look for another way. So, I did.
I bought a small, very cheap piece of rural land in the hills of Wales, and my wife and I moved onto it! I gave away most of my possessions – ALL of the clutter I’d been dragging from rented house to rented house for years – I stopped paying taxes, bills and rent, and started living from the land. We collected our drinking water from a spring and lived in a 25-foot yurt, with a wood-burner for heating, a Welsh river for washing in (yes, brrrr, COLD!), a solar panel for laptop charging, and a single lamp so we could see at night in our dwelling. We grew our own veg and got our meat fresh from the local farmer. The locals thought we were nuts, but were amicable and intrigued. And they let us get on with it. Mainly I learned how to connect with the land and the medicine that it carries.