In life, less is often more

Concepts for Conscious Living

In life, less is often more.

This idea gets played out on many levels. The first and most obvious is at a materialistic level. We tend to equate "having" with "being," and therefore assume the more we have, the more we are. The 13-year-old son of my tai chi master has been staying with Dar and me. He and his dad head back to Japan tomorrow. We were driving somewhere, and he started talking about a car he had been in, here in Canada. He said, "The lady said it was a 1999 car, but it was so old, it couldn't be a 1999." I asked him what he meant. He indicated that he had to turn a crank to open the windows, and push a button on each door to lock the doors. Thus, because the car lacked "gadgets," it had to be old and therefore, not as valuable.

We then got into a long discussion about the merits of electronic mirrors, locks, windows, from a safety and convenience perspective. At the end of the day, though, it's as if I was arguing that, if it's available, it is a good idea to have one. Or two.

This "more is better" idea also gets played out as we try to get what we want from others. We often figure that, if things aren't going right, we're just not trying hard enough. We are so sure that what we want is also what the other person wants (they just haven't figured it out yet . . . !) That turning up the heat seems a simple way to get the pie to bake, so to speak.

Our approach, then, might be to try something and see if we get the results we want. If we don't, we could re-examine the results we're seeking. Maybe what we are getting is good enough. If we decide we really do need to get a specific result, though, repeating a behaviour that gets us the opposite results is not likely to change much. Louder, more insistent, whatever, likely will simply get us the results we don't want – faster.

Or, as I often say:

One definition of insanity is repeating the same behaviour over and over and expecting different results.

Hadn't thought of this story in a while, but it came to me working with a client today. I once met with a mom of an 8-year-old. The mom had recently separated from her partner, and the mom came in to tell me that her daughter refused to communicate with her about the separation. The mom continually urged her daughter to tell her how she was feeling. The child said nothing, became more and more withdrawn and was spending most of her time eitherbeing lectured to by her increasingly angry mother, or hiding in her room.

I suggested the three of us meet. The child hid behind the mom's chair. I talked with the mom, who talked about the daughter. After 45 minutes, the daughter peeked around the chair. I said, "Hi," and she smiled. I said, "Been listening?" She nodded. I said, "Got a lot of feelings inside about mom and dad and the breakup?" She nodded. I said, "Think you could write your mom a letter about what you're feeling?" An emphatic nod. The mom said, "Damn. That was so simple. Why couldn't I think of that?" They left, and that night was handed a 12-page letter. They wrote back and forth until the kid felt comfortable talking. They didn't need to come back in after this one session.

Many of us get into making life more complicated than it need be. We take a position about something, and argue as if what we believe is true, rather than simply our opinion. We then go on a campaign to get others to agree with us. If a simple explanation doesn't persuade the masses, we get more and more into convincing mode, and trot out more and more explanations, manipulations, reasons. Like the mom above, totally stuck in getting her daughter to see the "reasonableness" of talking out her problems. As opposed to noticing that her actions were creating a wider and wider gulf between them.

Simplicity is contained in the concept of "less is more." Often, a simple question, for example, changes the direction of a conversation. "Why are you choosing to hurt yourself that way?" has the potential to help the other person evaluate their actions in terms of being responsible for themselves. "How is that action moving you closer to the result you have in mind?" has the potential to allow the person to turn from acting automatically to evaluating each action on the basis of what they are seeking.

And so it is with life. The more stuff, of any description, that you are burdened with, the more difficult it is to live elegantly. For example, many adults are deeply enmeshed in the lives of their grown children, or their aging parents, so much so that they are fully engaged in living out someone else's life. They have no time for their own. They are acting out of obligation, and are judging that they know best what experience their child or parent ought to be having.

A more simple approach is to remind yourself that you have little knowledge about your own life, let along insight into another's walk.

In the end, we are called to find ourselves amid the junk we surround ourselves with. We are called to pull ourselves out of our dramas, thereby seeing ourselves more clearly. We are called to pare away all of the "stuff" that isn't working, that is weighing us down, so that we might begin to free ourselves to be ourselves.

Anything else is distraction for distraction's sake.