Why Less Really Is So Much More

I’ve written a good many posts about the idea that less is more. This has come from my growing experience of having/experiencing more when I do less or have less.

We live in a world that keeps score by how much we have and how much we do. We grew up knowing this is how lives are judged, and most of us accepted that metric without ever really thinking about it.

What’s missing in this is how much things cost us in terms of money, time, space, and relationships. It’s easy to spend so much time working to acquire things that we rarely have time to enjoy those things. We can also spend so much time racking up accomplishments we don’t have time to spend with our family and friends.

At the moment [my wife] and I have the privilege of living a few hundred feet from one of our grandsons. Watching him grow up (he’s almost two now) is so enjoyable. I remember some of the same things from when my kids were young, but I also realise I missed far too much of my kids because I was working too hard to buy things that weren’t worth nearly as much as time with my children would have been.

The longer I live on this earth, the more I realise that relationships are the most valuable thing we can have. I wonder what would happen if we started using our relationships to keep score?