DEBORAH CORRAO / L’Observateur / January 8, 2000

I have two resolutions for the year 2000 and beyond.

One is to lose weight (this one has always been on my list and probably always will be). The second and most important is to simplify my life.It’s amazing the way we become tied down to material things. Not only do wespend our money buying and collecting a myriad of gizmos and thingamajigs we’ll never use, we also spend a lot of our time storing and maintaining and tripping over those items as we try to find the things we really need (like our toothbrushes). The idea of simplifying is to get rid of all the clutter in our liveswe really don’t need.

It crossed my mind, too, as I was cleaning out closets this week, that I could apply the simplification process to other areas of my life as well. How manytimes have I gone places I really didn’t want to go just because my friends were going and I didn’t want to miss out on something? Or hung onto friendships too long? Or gotten so busy with life in general that I haven’t taken the time to nurture the relationships that really matter? At choir rehearsal this week one of my good friends brought me something she’s been trying to get to me for weeks. It was in an envelope. She said she wasgoing to mail it to me because we’re both so busy and she never sees me. Howsad for both of us! Simplifying our lives is not a “simple” matter. It’s hard to go through ourclosets and throw away things. We can make up lots of reasons to hang ontoobjects that have long outlived their usefulness. It’s even more difficult tosimplify other areas of our lives. We have to be able to sit down and spend somequiet time within ourselves and reassess our lives. We have to be able to makehard choices about what is important to us: how we will invest our money, our time, our emotions.

So, this week I’ve made the first feeble efforts to simplify my life. But I’ve gota long way to go. If you’ve got any tips, let me know. I need all the help I can get.

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