Radical self love. Radical simplicity. Radical trust.

To me this is nothing more than common sense. Than the language of the world. It’s been a while since the language and manners of the human world have lost its meaning for me. After my 76th crash before 30 it started to dawn on me. If I’m doing everything right in the human world, I’m close to perfect, why is this not working? Why am I so miserable? What price was I willing to pay for a ‘normal’ life?

Now I know that I did not need to pay that price, I needed to learn the language of the world. I needed to understand that the human world is just a small part of the whole world, of our whole state of being. That there are so many other things we need to value and honor, and that those things are available in ourselves. All of the big universe is present in ourselves, the whole journey is just there. And the minute you get stuck in human life, in human world, the universe is inviting you in. Yes, into yourself and into the universe itself.

This sounds magical, and it is, but it’s also the most natural and simple thing that exists. It’s the way that humans and animals and plants and all life existed for millions of years before we started to believe that human world had to bring us all the answers and all the fulfillment.

I guess one of the most disturbing things in human world for me is ‘efficiency’. I believe that principle leaves little room for life. We apply it to almost anything and everything, and wanting to be efficient or asking something to be efficient is resisting everything that has to do with rhythm, pace, needs, feelings, urges, cycles. It just knocks the life right out of you and anything you do as soon as you do it for time or money, because that is what efficiency is.
You can be efficient, animals are very efficient, but there intention and goal is never efficiency, it is always life. Life itself. The honoring of it. Because that is what you exchange the moment your try to fit your life into the best mould. The moment you try to win time, money, status. The moment you think your best life is your most efficient life.

With this whole simple life thing I am not just getting rid of stuff, appointments, (digital) distractions, etc, it is mostly about regaining a sense of what life is all about. Of finding true meaning underneath all the noise and stuff and things you think you should be or want or need. And yes, this is radical. We often think that radical means bringing in extreme ideas from the outside, but the definition is radical is ‘from the root’, ‘from the origin’. That is what I mean by radical, the root of things. In that sense once you go the radical path, there is no return to human world values alone. They will simply be not good enough once you start to find the extraordinary in life.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. 
-Henry David Thoreau

photograph : Ryan McGinley