Choose Simplicity - Choose Adventure

I came upon these lupins while on a recent cycling adventure.

There is a genre of kids books called "choose your own adventure" that allow the reader to follow different threads and outcomes according to their choices at critical junctures. They are interesting in that they allow kids to feel like they have control over the narrative.

In reality, the control kids have with these books is as deep as the control they have over the rest of their lives. In other words, very little. The choices are all given by someone else. You must choose one. But what if you don't like any of the choices?

I like write-your-own-adventure. We should encourage people to create their own stories. Then they  become someone that can create their own adventure in the grand story we call life.

How do we become the author, the artist of our own life?

“I would rather die on the street as a street performer than try to create some sort of life that satisfies someone else.”

- Ricky Syers

Choosing voluntary simplicity is a good way to respond to the sad story of environmental degradation, but that is not all. Just as important is discovering that life is an adventure, and we can be the teller of our own tale.

I have never accepted the mainstream mythical story - go to school, get married, buy a house, have kids, work hard, buy your way to success and be happy. Like a choose-your-own-adventure novel, in this scenario you are restricted to a limited number of choices that someone else is making for you.

No thank you, not for me. I want other choices. I want infinite choices.

A life of simplicity allows us to write our own adventure. It frees time and resources to enjoy life not in a hurried rush, but to live it as an ongoing, slowly unfurling work of art. That is hard to do while frantically running the rat race.

When we choose simplicity, we choose adventure. Our adventure.

"Life is pure adventure and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art."

- Maya Angelou