Keeping it simple counts a lot

My Mother spent the last few months of her life in a care home. It was a shared room, and she was provided with a bed, bureau and closet, along with meals, care and service. Her only possessions on hand were her clothes and some personal items. Her position confirmed the old saying, ‘We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we will carry nothing out.”
Within the last six months two cousins of mine have moved from their homes into a care home. They have single rooms, giving them more space and privacy, but otherwise their situation is the same as my mother’s.
What stood out for me in their cases was the amount of possessions they had accumulated over the years. The problem was what to do it with it all. Their families already had full houses, and you couldn’t even give it away. Charities took some items, but the rest had to go to the dump.
In the last few weeks of wildfires, people have been forced to evacuate their homes or received alerts to be ready to depart. If you have to suddenly leave your home, what do you take with you? What are your most important possessions?
Among them I would include my identification and financial documentation. What next? So many choices! It does make us pause to distinguish between our needs and our wants. Some of us have more than we need. Why do we accumulate so much? Is it selfishness, greed, prestige? Or is it habit, security, lifestyle? Excess wealth can be more of a burden than a blessing. Wealth can give us security, pleasure and comfort. It cannot buy contentment, inner peace, happiness, friendship and the intangibles.
While some have too much, more have too little. Billions of people live in poverty. Look at the numbers who just survive and live very short lives or the millions of displaced people. We see it in Canada with the growing number of the homeless.
There is a spiritual wisdom that the less we have the more fully we live, living from the inside instead of the outside. The Shaker hymn Simple Gifts shares a vision of a world shaped by love, simplicity, equality, freedom and joy. Maybe we need to downsize.
Those of us who are retired and have financial security can take an inventory of our wealth and begin to share the excess. We can do this in at least two ways. One is to review our will and start to dispose of our money now to those named there. Secondly, we can give to charities. There are so many needs out there.
The wildfires burning across Canada are a reminder of the fragility of Mother Earth and the damage we are causing by the wasteful and reckless way we are living. A simple lifestyle can make a difference to the amount of pollution caused by our selfishness.
On another note, we can make a difference by the kind of funeral and burial we have. Arrange your own funeral and make it as simple and inexpensive as possible, avoiding whatever damages the environment.
Everett Hobbs, CBS