Living in light and lightness
“Dom” means home in several slavic languages, rooted in the latin “domus”. Add a dash of scandinavian origin (hem, hjem) and you end up with the blended English word “home”. For those allergic to latin, we could have used the trigramme “pad” or “hut”.
What is a home, in essence? It is the place where we choose to live. At the most elementary level, it is the semi-enclosed space that comprises our immediate, semi-private surroundings. It is an extension of ourselves, a third skin (after our clothes) that separates us from the external environment. Home is a metaphor. We furnish our home with objects of our choosing, much as we fill our minds with thoughts of our choosing. We only truly live in the present moment. The rest is a fading past or an obscure future and serves only to clutter our minds.
The home is a microcosm. The small world we create within our homes is an expression of what the larger world would be like if it were ours to make.
In our consumerist society, homes have become like a tumorous growth. Observe an aerial view of typical american suburbs and the metaphor will strike you.
Many want bigger houses, with more space to fill with things they think they need because others have have them. Bigger refrigerators and freezers to store massive quantities of food that will often end up wasted. Dedicated Inox electrical appliances with no other function than to toast the occasional slice of bread. Electric can openers to spare us the slightest manual effort.
The ultimate luxury lies in artful simplicity, where having less allows us to be more. Simplicity can be understood as an ongoing process gradually removing clutter from your inner and outer life. As your mind clears, space opens up within you and allows you to see things with greater clarity.
Examine every single object and determine its value for you. Does it serve a necessary function? Do you cherish it? If neither, give it away or recycle it. If you cherish it but it serves no necessary function, make it a gift of love to someone else. If it has no necessary function but you cherish it too much to separate with it, then its function is aesthetic. Make its place a prominent one, and cherish it indeed, every day.
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