zen habits

I took a little quiz once that was designed to identify core values.
I think it was in a magazine but I don't remember which one. It was a very long time ago.

The first page was a list of 100 words like beauty, sincerity, wealth, luxury, and on and on. The reader was to go down the list and mark each word to which they felt an immediate emotional connection.
On the next page, we were referred back to page one and told to narrow our list down to 20 words that were the most representative of our core values. We were then challenged to choose just ten words, and finally only the top five. Thinking that was it, turning the page - surprise - we were now asked to narrow this list down to just ONE word.

My one word was 'simplicity' - my most fundamental core value.
I had not realized it until I took the quiz, but of course it was absolutely true.

It was true even back in the seventh grade when I first discovered Henry David Thoreau. At an age when I might have been more interested in clothes and boys and sharing secrets with my bff, I was day-dreaming of living in a cabin at Walden Pond. (I did, many years later, live in a cabin in the Colorado Rockies, as I posted here).

I've taken the long road to reach the point of this post, which is that I've discovered another blog I'm just crazy for - Zen Habits.

An example of the gems to be found there:

The Four Laws of Simplicity and How to Apply Them
#1. Collect everything in one place.
#2. Choose the essential.
#3. Eliminate the rest.
#4. Organize the remaining stuff neatly and nicely.

No, it's not a joke. Yes, it is crazy simple. That's the point.

There's great relief to be found in Zen Habits for our stressed, pressurized, complicated lives.
There are roads back to quiet contented simplicity.
If that's where you'd like to go, I wish you happy travels.