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A man is rich in proportion to the things he
can
afford to let alone.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
V. EMBRACE SIMPLICITY
This last quote is not from a Taoist text, but
it may as well be. Readers familiar with Thoreau and his philosophy
of life as expressed in Walden understand the great importance of
simplicity. Creativists must look honestly and intensely at every
facet of their lives and root out all that is not necessary. Creativists
reduce things to their bare minimum. They search out the essentials.
They hold to the pure.
The importance of this principle cannot be understated.
It's all too easy nowadays to get caught up in the commonly believed
maxim that more is better. Such a view is extremely dangerous to
creativists. It destroys their intuition. It introduces expectations
which greatly hamper their ability to be spontaneous. It increases
their needs, making it more difficult to be self-sufficient. It
complicates their lives and corrupts their creativity.
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