The Southern shores of Lake Ontario located along the Northern edge of New York State, provide some of the most spectacular sunsets in the world! We are fortunate to live where we may experience them daily. They are always inspirational and they afford us regular opportunities to take small walkabouts right in our own back yard.
If life’s journey be endless where is its goal? The answer is, it is everywhere. We are in a palace which has no end, but which we have reached. By exploring it and extending our relationship with it we are ever making it more and more our own. ~Rabindranath Tagore
We explore the world around us to extend and expand our relationship with it. Like any relationship, it requires attention, focus, presence, respect and love. This connection we seek with our world is what inspires us to jump in the car and just go every chance we get. We do not need a particular destination for these adventures. Our palace is everywhere.
“When I retire I want to travel!”
These were the words spoken by my son, Jack, as we drove through the Adirondack region of upstate NY on one of our walkabouts this summer.
“Jack, you do not have to wait until you retire!”
“You don’t?”
I am thrilled Jack loves travel and adventure! I am disappointed he already has come to believe you have to wait to follow your passions while you fill out the template of life. While I am living a walkabout lifestyle now, it wasn’t always this way. Life decisions and changes provided me the opportunity to find my own authentic path and passion for exploring my world. However, my experiences with my children, while numerous, have been safe and predictable adventures. Little by little I have been opening new doors for them to show them there is more to see than amusement parks and arcades. I don’t want them to follow a prescribed path and be stuck in a box. That didn’t work out so well for me and I suspect not for many of you either.
There is a great deal of focus and online discussion these days about the idea of minimalism. The notion of minimalism originated as a way to describe movements in art and music where the artist focuses on simplicity and only the most essential features of the work. Today it is more likely to be associated with a way of being that focuses on living with only what we need.
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. ~Hans Hoffman
We believe the origin of this term is still describing the same thing, a movement in art. Each day and every experience is our blank canvas, an opportunity to create our life. We can choose to do this with simplicity and clarity, focusing on only what we need. Joshua Becker, of the web site, Becoming Minimalist, describes it in this way:
Minimalism …is marked by clarity, purpose and intentionality. At its core, minimalism is the intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of everything that distracts us from it. It is a life that forces intentionality. And as a result, it forces improvements in almost all aspects of your life. (Read his full article “What is Minimalism”.)
