Lighten your load on life's journey

Lighten your load on life's journey: "In 'Simplify Your Life' (Hyperion, 1994), Elaine St. James writes: 'Wise men and women in every major culture throughout history have found that the secret to happiness is not in getting more but in wanting less.'"



If you can reduce what you want, what you expect, reduce to the lower base needs, then everything you're blessed with above the base needs seems like frosting on the brownie. About 5 years ago, my load was lightened involutarily. A big, speeding mini-van rear-ended my red sports car and crushed it. I was too young to rent a car, so the next day I bought a Ford Festiva.



Festivas are built by Kia, and the winters in Korea must be warmer than Minnesota, because the Festiva is designed to only blow heat out of the floor vents and the defrost vents. The dash vents are not connected to the heating system. Well, after four winters in a car with a badly designed heating system, I just adapted to wearing Mylar socks and Sorrel boots whenever I left the house. I'd bring along my regular shoes in a little tote bag. I didn't want a better heater enough to trade in my little car. It was reliable and cost me almost nothing, plus it had cool flame stickers on it.



I figured out my base needs, and they included getting to the grocery store and the park'n'ride. The Festiva met those needs. Now I finally have a car that blows heat out the dash vents, and it's an unparalleled luxury. The windows aren't power, but it doesn't matter. I can crank them up without the glass sliding out of it's track the way it always did on the Festiva. Lightening my load couldn't have been a better blessing, as it helped me to appreciate my new Toyota as if it were a Cadillac. What a humbling experience.