Less is More

It seems overly simplistic when I put two and two together and realize that the emptier I feel inside the more “stuff” I try to ingest, but it is the truth. From too much food to too much fun, I find the more I chase a feeling of satisfaction the more it eludes me. I suspect you are familiar with this cycle, especially this time of year. The “all in” mentality that typically accompanies the holidays is reinforced by that little voice in the back of our heads deluding us into believing that, come January first, we have a new lease on life. The reckless abandon of the past month that racked up the pounds and drew down the bank account, becomes our motivation to take on the world with a whole new fervor. In many ways I am grateful, albeit amused, at this cyclical ritual that defines our consumer culture. I equate it to a collective case of spiritual bulimia. Initiating with Thanksgiving, where we stuff ourselves full of food as a symbol of our gratitude, followed by Black Friday, our nation-wide shopping spree, where I have at times found myself thinking, “There must be something I need!” To the multiple weekly parties, charity functions and family gatherings that are now what we simply call, ‘The Season’. And so it starts: the binge before the great purge. The culmination of each year finds us eating too much, drinking too much, buying too much, and doing too much. As I was going through the motions this year, I attempted to bring some mindfulness to my madness. While not able to completely disengage from it all, I did attempt to play witness to my own participation in the frenzy and take notes. One theme that kept recurring for me was that of filling up: filling up the stomach, filling up the calendar, filling up the shopping cart, filling up garbage and recycling bins. It made me wonder: What are we trying to fill? Is all of this consumption a symbol of a greater emptiness? One morning it dawned on me. As I sipped my coffee in the quiet early morning hours, my stomach growled. I thought, “You cannot be hungry!” I noticed that I felt lighter, in both body and spirit, at that time of day - before breakfast. Break fast. This very simple realization shined a light on the whole season for me. The wisest spiritual leaders have been telling us for millennia upon millennia, that the path to happiness is a disciplined journey inside ourselves through meditation and some form of fasting. When the body and mind are empty, they are open to receive God’s bounty. The fewer tangibles we have in and around us, the more room we have for love. During “The Season” we are bombarded from every angle, yet the more we pile it on the farther away we are from what it is all about: PEACE. The only thing that can stop the crazy train is a gigantic heap of nothing. ‘Nothing’ in this context is actually tangible. No thing. While these insights did not stop me from climbing aboard the crazy train this year, I did manage to skip a few stops. Ironically, that led to a shorter, less corrective list of New Year’s Resolutions. I was more at peace than in the past, so I had less to fix on January 1! Perhaps my simple resolution to continue to tune in on a regular basis will impact those other nagging items (basically cutting back on everything!) by simply making them less apparent in the first place. Less is so much more.