Just Enough is Plenty

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life,… to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness out of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it was sublime, to know it by experience.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life,… to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness out of it, and publish its meanness

cost of a thing is the amount of… life which is required to be exchanged for it.’

The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said, ‘Those who know they have enough are rich.

If I should sell my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for…. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

I would say that we are being challenged, at this moment in history, to compost capitalism; and in the rich soil of resistance and renewal, our task, our collective task, is to seed a new Earth story.

The words left an impression on me I think because they describe that strange, existential ache that we probably have all felt at some time or another, when contemplating how we should live our lives in a world that seems so tragically off track.

it hurts because we are inside this dying system, we are inside this unsustainable form of civilisation while it is undermining the life support system we call Earth, and to me what is perhaps most unsettling about this is that it’s not yet clear what comes next; nor is it obvious that the global problems we face even have smooth, painless solutions.

The pain you feel is capitalism dying.