Published: May 04, 2008 12:37 am            

CUMMINS: Life wasn’t simple for Adam or Moses either

Adam had a simple life until Eve complicated it. Moses wandered for 40 years searching for it. I led a simple life back in the old days, because without much, it wasn't as complicated. One of my few possessions was a sack full of marbles. They were kept in a Bull Durham tobacco pouch, which was a small cloth sack with a little packet of very thin papers attached. It fit real nice in the top pocket of my of bib overalls.

Most boys back then usually got one baseball and one bat during their young life. When the cover came off the ball, black tape made it almost as good as new. When the bat broke, I knew how to whittle a new one from a good piece of hickory. That was in simpler times when a growing boy could spend time wandering around barns, creeks, woods and swinging on grapevines.

My 11-year-old grandson doesn't have access to any of those natural wonders, but he thinks life is relatively simple. It's because he's supplied with the latest gadgetry and can sprawl out on the floor with a TV blasting away while he's concentrating on a laptop screen blowing away alien invaders with a laser-destruction device. It's good for his hand-eye coordination. I used a slingshot to develop my hand-eye coordination, but they're now considered too dangerous. I could explain how to make one similar to what David used against Goliath, but you can look it up on the Internet.

Take away the modern things, and what would a kid do? But I wish they'd come and take away most of the stuff I deal with that supposedly makes life easier. It would be simpler if I didn't have to keep all my worldly possessions in working order. If everything I own functioned, I'd have some time to think, ponder, concentrate, meditate, read, write (without writer's block) or twiddle my thumbs. The only way I'll ever regain the simple life is to have a Mr. Fix-It-Genius-Guy live in my attic where I can buzz him.

It's all the 'required” modern stuff that complicates attainment of a simpler life. In the past three weeks, my washer began leaking, a pipe dripped rusty water down a wall, and the car radiator spewed steam. Those complications did provide a week of humane contact with plumbers and mechanics. But will the firewall on my computer extinguish a fire? Would a Web site contribute to fulfillment?

Back in the mid-1800's, Robert Browning, one of the great Romantic poets, thought he had it bad. He summed up his frustrations for all ages lamenting that, “Less is more.” Can we have ever more with less? Not until we change our ways. When the resources run out, we'll learn.

The same type problems bugged Henry David Thoreau, who was a contemporary of Browning. He finally gave up the demanding life and escaped to a shack on Walden Pond so he could live, as he said, “deliberately.” And he didn't take along a cell phone to give him something to do when stuck in traffic. Thoreau published “Walden, or Life in the Woods” in 1854. As he explained, “Our life is frittered away with detail ... . Simplify, simplify. 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.” If he were exasperated with the lifestyle forced upon him then, how would he react now? But he was disadvantaged, not being able to search for answers on Google.

That's what I've been doing, putting all my affairs and accounts on a thumb drive. It's one of those little plug-in things you insert in a computer, if you know how, and then click and save all the documents pertaining to your life. Not having any idea what I'll ever do with it, but, at least, I'll have saved my earthly life.

Two hundred year's ago, Browning's friend and poet, William Wordsworth wrote, “The world is too much with us.” It's still too much with us, and my life is frittered away with detail. That's why I'd planned to escape to a little shack in the woods, but when I went to move in, loggers had cut the trees.



Terry Cummins is making progress from the complex to the simple. Contact at TLCTLC@AOL.com

        

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