“Let the beauty we love be what we do.” – Rumi

With the ups and downs of my life, I have gone from having a lot to having a little. From being in love to being alone. From carrying the burden of responsibility to holding nothing but time.

The noise has faded, and in its absence, I begin to find myself. One early morning sitting in the silence before dawn I felt complete – it now comes and goes like the tide but if I listen, it is there in my heart.

I have lived a life where more never satisfied. My pockets full, wardrobes overflowing, diary crammed. Yet something always missing; chasing fulfilment by adding more noise, more goals, more of more.

In the Dao De Jing

Chapter 15, it asks:

“Who can wait quietly while the mud settles?”

Simplicity emerges when we stop stirring. Chapter 19 asks us for example to look at our constant search for more information:

“Give up wisdom, discard knowledge,” it says, “and the people will benefit a hundredfold.”

This is not anti-intellectualism. It’s a return to what is plain, what is honest. In his world, overwhelmed with performance; simplicity then becomes an act of sincere reverence.

Chapter 67, returns us to the three treasures:

“I have three treasures, compassion, frugality, and not daring to be ahead.”

Frugality surprises many. Why not abundance? Why not generosity? But here, frugality is not tightness—it’s attunement. Simplicity steps off the page and into the way we live—the kitchen, the bedroom, the way we pour tea. It’s not just the essence of things—it’s the energy with which we live them. The breath, the gesture, the unhurried moment. This ‘frugality’ isn’t about lack. It’s about sufficiency. It asks:

“What truly nourishes? What can be let go without loss?”

It invites us to spend our energy with care—to invest our breath, attention, and presence wisely. Frugality isn’t scarcity—it’s spaciousness. It doesn’t crush desire; it refines it.

Instead of asking, “How much can I have?” it wonders, “How much do I need to live well and love this world?” “How can I serve more?”

This reframes frugality from material restraint to energetic reverence. It becomes an art: the art of enough. Attention without exhaustion. Giving without keeping score. Simplicity becomes quiet generosity, of not competing with life but following life’s flow, neither mourning the past nor chasing the future. This is not about indifference but about the process of disentangling oneself from materialism. It is about clarity, cultivation of the beauty of enough:

“Those who know they have enough are rich.”

Not rich in things, but in perception. In presence. In peace. When we stop reaching, we start seeing. A bowl of soup. A soft blanket. These things are always here—we just forget to look. In this still attention, small things regain their shape. The present stops being a corridor and becomes a home.

As I need less, I appreciate more. And as I appreciate more, I need less. This rhythm is found in the stillness of Wuji, in the delay between breaths, in the attentive stillness of the skilled artisan. The Dao reveals itself in emptiness—not as void, but as space. The heart softens when it stops needing. The eyes open when desire quiets. The ears hear when the noise fades. The roof above you. The breath in your chest. The hand reaching for yours. Simplicity lets these miracles be heard. In a culture built on the fear of scarcity it says;

“I have all that I need”

But this isn’t fantasy or self-denial. It’s a return, a making of space. So that we can be aware of all the beauty that is hidden by all the clutter.

‘Abundance’ is not accumulation, it is attention; the longing to reclaim our breath from the noise. It’s not about purity, it’s about nourishment, it’s about clarity.

Doing one thing at a time. One cup of tea savoured, entering a room without your current mask, one felt complete breath. Speaking only when something needs saying. This isn’t deprivation, it’s a return, a homecoming to rhythm, breath, and enough.

We live inside dreams spun by an immature uninitiated culture—dreams of having, showing, proving. And in this spinning world, when the noise arises, the most radical act of all may be to do nothing at all, to be still, silent, acts borne out of attentive loving trust.

Letting the mud settle. Letting the water clear. Letting life find you in the quiet warmth of a hand you didn’t realise was already holding yours. This body in which I momentarily abide is not a collection of atoms but a graced wondrous being. This mind to which I wed myself is not emotional and intellectual entanglements, but a vast unknowable awareness in which I swim.

The simplest simplicity in being here right now, stillness is peace, sitting or standing take a look around you and you may find that almost everything is still except perhaps your monkey mind that is not too sure about the simplicity of sitting or standing.

Living in a bubble of ‘What is this?’ I wonder randomly in the companionship of life and death.

Our mental universe (which contains all we know, feel or are afraid of in the real world we live in) may be happy, tragic, comic, etc.

We are however capable of transforming it and giving to it a reverence which gives life the reverence we all deserve. In doing so life becomes more joyful, thanks to the extraordinary effort needed to create this reverence.

Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so; I have at times followed this path because it was easy to do so. Creating an environment of reverence is an effective means of counteracting this depressing, banal habit. Surely it’s time to go in search of joyful enchantment.

What is stopping us from living in that world of ‘joyful enchantment’?

My first thought is that we do live in that world. It lies in every attentive ordinary interaction.

The second thought is that we have lost faith in ourselves and in one another.

The third is we often don’t get to inhabit that world because we have built a way of living that instructs us to defend ourselves against it.

The answer perhaps then is to follow the guidance of John O’Donohue:

“The great challenge is to listen to your life and to be awake to its possibilities.”

Little Heading February

An ode to abundance

Give me a choice

Both is what I like

I love the east coast and

the west

I need familiar and

I need fresh

A soulmate, one for either side

A palace for a home

a hut upon a stone

the city the crowds and

wild sacred grounds

Sat in both now no need to decide

the night clubs and the gigs

The retreat back to my caves

Need peace time space to think not too long – it may push me to the brink

The beauty and ugly side

No one answer to life