Our world and our culture has become a math problem of addition.
Addition is easy. It’s the first thing we learn how to do in math as young children. It eventually comes naturally — second nature to how we function and take in the world. But I think the way we utilize addition in all parts of our lives now — more is more — has become such a great and deep detriment to our minds, and our joys, and our inner worlds. We can add all day, but space is limited and real estate in our minds and hearts are limited to how much “stuff” we can add and add and add.
This constant adding of stuff, even physical stuff around us, slowly takes up that beautiful and beloved real estate in our minds. What a shame. Our minds have such a beautiful potential for creativity, for love, for deeply human things that make us unique and thriving beings in the world. When we are thriving, we also help the world around us to thrive. We help the earth thrive, our loved ones thrive, the wonders of the creation around us become lively and evident and beautiful in a way that make your heart feel like its roots may just go as deep as forever in the soils of humanity and creation.
I’m finished with the practice of perpetual addition. The other side of the equation sign holds numbers so vast that I’ve forgotten the wonders of my humanity. My hope for renewal and life come from subtraction.
Addition eventually turns into exponents, multiplying so quickly and vastly that we can’t keep up. Subtraction, however, simplifies. I subtracted the music and audiobooks from my morning. Now I can hear the metal on the wood stove crackling as the fire warms it. I appreciate it more. I deleted the television and cell phone from my routine, and become more in tune with how the light fills the house between the cracks in the doors, and what the location of the light in the house means — is it late morning, early morning, mid morning? The existing parts around me gain meaning in the holy solitude of each subtraction. For I begin to see that what I need is already here. I begin to see that my needs are really fully met.
When I subtract, I make the space to see, appreciate, and create beauty around me. I learn to want for nothing, and see just how rich this life really is, how perfection is only wrapped up in perception, and subtraction leaves space to rearrange the pieces of perception into something pure and holy.
For I think we can only begin to thrive when we can appreciate and practice the simple, but deeply satisfying art of subtraction.
