There is something euphoric about simplicity.

I first unearthed this treasure in the mission field. First, there was waking up cold to the bark of the guard dog. Daily, manual labor squeezes away suburban stress. The ancient, steady way to weave a beautiful blanket revealed more than the same blanket mass produced inside a sweat house. Sweet fruit that dripped from my chin and milk from the cow outside tasted immeasurably more satisfying than waxed and pasteurized grocery products taken home in crackling plastic bags. Pounding dust into my feet as I chased a laughing child was more thrilling than entertaining another kid in front of a television.

It is a concept Thoreau discovered:

“Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion” (Henry David Thoreau, Walden, “Where I lived, And What I Lived For”).

I am discovering what is necessity, establishing boundaries, choosing my burdens and friends. It is newfound freedom and peace that seems to have been lost for a century… may be two. It is no longer contending for the top to sit pacified in wealth and power, but satisfaction with what are our sincere passions. It’s a basic human right–the pursuit of happiness–for all. If only we would find it.