On Simplifying Life

​A strange thing happens when one reaches his or her mid-fifties. Priorities change. Suddenly, accumulating material possessions seems less important than having the time and money to spend on visits with family, travel, and the like.

This is the time when people go through their closets, attics, basements, and garages and weed out items, which, for too long, they thought they couldn’t live without. This is the time when people sell their two-storey mini-mansions in favor of three-bedroom, single-storey houses, whether overlooking the ninth green or not.

This is the time when people trade in their high-pressure, ladder-climbing professions in favor of jobs that offer greater assets and fewer liabilities, both physically and emotionally. Oh, the new jobs may not – and often do not – pay as well, but they offer rewards that the jobs society told them they should have never did.

The people crank up the old computer with its mismatched components and sit down to write the great American novel. Sometimes, they become the next Pulitzer prize winner. Usually, however, they reap their rewards in being able to sit and chat with those who stop by or in the delight of watching characters develop before their eyes.

They make a startling discovery: Not only did their grandparents know how really to live, but they are able to capture the same lifestyle – even now, in the topsy-turvy, convoluted world in which we live.