The Power of Less – Blogging, living and monasticism

I have recently spent a lot of time considering what I want to do with my life and perhaps, more importantly how I should go about it. One of the recent developments in my life that has inspired and encouraged me to find work in this field has been writing this blog. I have always enjoyed communicating in general and writing specifically. It’s also something where people at different times in my life have told me that I have a knack for using words. It’s pretty fortunate that I have this ‘knack’ as my other skills can often seem somewhat limited!

Yet writing my blog has become a challenge in itself. Attempting to write interesting, thought-provoking, useful and stimulating posts sometimes comes naturally, but at other times it feels like a punishing drag – each letter of each word being engraved seemingly individually into the granite hard ether of web space – destined (possibly!)to be ignored or at best casually flipped upon and quickly dismissed.  Moreover, this sense of being gunged up as a writer can feel seemingly exagerated by the lack of  verbal response from readers.  Even a short, but heartfelt and relevant comment can make a big difference to an aspiring writer!

Still the greatest challenges I feel are inward, not external ones. One dissident of the former Romanian Communist regime, who had suffered many years of incarceration in prison and persecution during the brutal years of Communist rule, was once asked shortly before his death, with respect to his difficult life experiences whether he had any enemies? To which he replied, ” No, I don’t. I have no enemies…only myself.”

This insight seems as true about the writing life as it is about the spiritual pilgrimmage…our greatest and most persistent adversary is usually our self.

Abraham's Oak Russian Holy Trinity Monastery (Photo courtesy of CopperKettle licensed under Wikimedia Creative Commons)

One of the themes of Dark Nights White Soul that keeps cropping up in my thinking, feeling and writing is the simplicity of the contemplative and monastic life. I feel increasingly drawn, not to sexual celibacy, but to the quietude and purity of this spiritual tradition. It offers, perhaps especially to post-modern people soaked in a hyper technological world, an existence that provides firm, yet flexible, natural boundaries. Monasticism offers limitations not as obstacles to pleasure, but as the real pathway to true happiness, personal peace and joy. Such simple and ‘holy’ practices encourage me to make important choices today about what I will do with my life, both in the macroscopic ideals of my career and vocation in the future, but also to the microscopic details of practical, everyday living in the present.

I lay down this evening to read and pray feeling frustrated and burdened by the multiplicity of tasks I have made myself and my lack of concrete progress in achieving any one of them. As I lay quietly in my room reflecting a book came to mind that I picked up a few months ago from Waterstones called  The Power of Less – The 6 Essential Productivity Principles that will change your life by Leo Babauta.

I’m just going to quote a couple of lines from his opening introductory chapter:

‘…the simplicity I seek in my life is simplicity in what I do.

Do less, not more, but achieve more because of the choices I make.

Simplicity boils down to two steps:

1. Identify the essential.
2. Eliminate the rest.’

The Power of Less, Leo Babauta, page IX