The Simple Life

On the sacredness of simplicity, why we forget what we value (or ought to value), and how to remind ourselves what matters.

Photo by Nick Hillier

“O sacred solitary empty morning, tranquil meditation – fruit of book-case and clock-tick, of note-book and arm-chair; golden and rewarding silence, influence of sun-dappled plane-trees, far-off noises of birds and horses, possession beyond price of a few cubic feet of air and an hour of leisure!”

Cyril Connolly’s ode to the luxuries of a simple life comes in the midst of a year spent in solitude as depicted in The Unquiet Grave. The book (written under the pseudonym of Palinurus) depicts a writer sifting through the contents of his overworked mind, seeking some kind of signal in the noise. His pen (to borrow from Keats) has gleaned his teeming brain, and we are left with the harvest of his mind: there is something sacred in “empty mornings” and the “golden and rewarding silence” in which he can contemplate the most meaningful things. All he needs to enjoy this peace and intellectual reward is simplicity itself.

In Mihail Sebastian’s For Two Thousand Years, the narr…