Words on a Simple Life

“To be content with what we possess is the greatest and most secure of riches.”

– Cicero

Hallo! I hope this blog finds you happy & healthy.

Today – May 13^th – would have been John’s 52^nd birthday. It is also my good friend, Ella’s, 12^th birthday. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you may recall Ella runs my Pink Gazelle Cards booth at the Christmas craft show in Sidney each year 😊

Twenty years ago, this May, my Mom and I were in the UK visiting family. On that trip, I bought a small but powerful book of compiled quotes called “Words on a Simple Life” (a Helen Exley Giftbook). I loved it the moment I picked it up. The quotes are about living simply but they are also about living with gratitude…for the two often go hand in hand.

Within three months of returning home from that trip, John was dead.

And that little book, “Words on a Simple Life,” became a beacon of sorts to me…a way of life that resonated with my soul.

Over the past twenty years, I have not always succeeded in actually living a simple life infused with gratitude for all that I do have. Far from it! But it has always been the goal to which I have strived. The older I get, the more I get it.

This pandemic has been a bit of a crash course in reminding me how to embrace the simpler things in life…gardening, baking cookies (which, naturally, I have taken to the extreme), cooking, reading, writing, mending by the fire, having bubble baths, watching movies, napping, walking in nature.

I am loving this simpler, slower, quieter pace of life. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t particularly miss human contact…probably because I have had enough of it for twenty lifetimes. Perhaps that sounds odd coming from a single gal who lives alone – but I have been a very busy bee social butterfly, flitting about the planet visiting this person or that…and when I do stay home, many of my peeps come to visit me.

I find it absolutely fascinating how we are all taking such different experiences and lessons from this pandemic. Some people hate the social isolation and forced down-time; others love it. What is your experience?

Here are a few quotes from “Words on a Simple Life”:

“A small house will hold as much happiness as a big one.”

– Unknown

“Let your boat of life be light, packed only with what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends worth the name, someone to love and to love you, a cat, a dog, enough to eat and enough to wear…”

– Jerome K Jerome

“He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.”

– Goethe

“I believe we would be happier to have a personal revolution in our individual lives and go back to simpler living and more direct thinking. It is the simple things of life that make living worthwhile, the sweet fundamental things such as love and duty, work and rest and living close to nature.”

– Laura Ingalls Wilder

“One cannot collect all the shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.”

– Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“I have learned to have very modest goals for society and myself; things like clean air, green grass, children with bright eyes, not being pushed around, useful work that suits one’s abilities, plain tasty food and occasional satisfying nookie.”

– Paul Goodman

Okay…THAT kind of human contact (occasional satisfying nookie) I do miss!

Take care, stay well, thanks for reading & have a simply wonderful week 🙂

Maryanne Pope is the author of A Widow’s Awakening, the playwright of Saviour and the screenwriter of God’s Country. Maryanne is CEO of Pink Gazelle Productions and Chair of the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund. To receive her regular weekly blog, Weekly Words of Wisdom, please sign up here.