It's so entertaining to watch Charlotte maneuver around a room. She is a year old now, but she hasn't learned to walk yet, and crawling is still her main mode of transportation. She laughs when she stands by herself; I can easily see that her few seconds of freedom leave her giddy. She has yet to take that first step on her own, but when she does, it will be baby steps all the way. You know the kind - wobbly, uncertain, exhilarating, anxious baby steps.And baby steps take patience.
I know that our journey to simplicity starts with baby steps, but I seem to lack the patience this method requires. I want to leap and run a marathon immediately. I want to downsize and be done with it, making it as unconscious an act as breathing. Yet it will be baby steps for quite a while.
A book I recently read had the statement that we make over 200 food choices a day. That surprised me; in fact, it didn't seem possible. Yet, every time we pass a Baskin Robbins, every time we pass a bakery, every time we open the refrigerator, every time we go to the supermarket, we make choices of what to eat, what not to eat, even whether to eat. The same thing can be said for all other choices in our lives. The art of enveloping one's life in simplicity is an evolution, which by definition is ongoing.
So far in our effort to downsize and simplify, we have managed to get a good crawl started. Our new house is not the place for a marathon - at least not yet. But it is the perfect location for taking our journey to the next level - those tentative, scary, thrilling baby steps.
