My simple truth for today.

My lunch today - lightly steamed broccoli and cauliflower tossed in
olive oil and salt, scattered with toasted seeds and crumbled feta

I have been feeling quite philosophical for the last few weeks. This year has been different for me. Not different in that anything is specifically different, but the way I have been experiencing or reacting to the same things has changed. This feeling culminated a few weeks ago in me deciding to do a detox and kind of home retreat. This entailed me cutting out alcohol, cigarettes (yes, I am a social smoker), meat and harmful speech (harder than you think…). Along with this attempting to meditate twice a day, exercise regularly and loads of yoga.

It seems like a lot to take on all at once, but my feeling was that they all kind of fit together and one of these in isolation would be harder than all at once. I am three weeks in and I think I was right. It has been way easier (with a few exceptions) than I anticipated. I am feeling so so good but with all good things (and knowing that they must come to an end) I have been spending time thinking of how to take some of this into my life in the long term.

My life so far has been very easy going, fun and filled with delicious frivolity. I’ve been quite the hedonist. But the things I enjoyed so much before are losing their sheen and appeal, which is why I said earlier that I feel like the way I am experiencing and reacting to things has changed. So I am in unchartered territory. I need to redefine my life style. This is both scary and exciting.

After much self reflection and quiet time with this sense. The main theme which has immerged is simplicity. The feeling that I want to keep my life simple. In wanting to keep my life simple I need to strip away the unnecessary. But that presupposes knowing what is really necessary in my life. This then stretches into having to know who ‘I’ really am in order to know what I really need and what I would be better off without.

As much as this may sound really deep and like a rabbit hole of questions which can’t be answered it has actually been way easier to come up with my answers since I have been on my detox and home retreat. The answers have not been all that profound either, just good solid old fashioned wisdom. The difference being that I feel like I am ready to really hear and act on the wisdom for a change.

At the risk of being really vague, I am going to let this journey unfold rather than give it too many distinct labels right now. For this blog it means that my cooking (or simplification thereof) is all part of this keeping it simple motto which I am hoping to expand throughout my life. The scary personal hurdle I am having the most trouble overcoming is the feeling that simple may be (or be perceived as) boring. But I am going to test it out all the same.

So boring or not, here goes!