This is our annual themes episode, in which we set out themes for the year. Not an original idea, I think I got it from a podcast I used to wisent to, but for the past few years we had set themes which we will seek to explore.
(We used to do this around January, but then changed to March, because as everyone knows, the real new years day is 25 March.)
My theme last year was the Year of Focus, which I did really drill down into, following Cal Newport’s Life of Focus course, and trying to remove some of the many distractions in my life. That went well, ut it made me realise just how much stuff there is to preoccupy me – not just physical stuff, all the clutter which I have accumulated, but the mental clutter – the constant background chatter of news and opinion.
So this year’s theme is ‘Less is More’. Not an original phrase, I know. But something which I hope will guide me going forward.
There’s a programme on the BBC called Sort Your Life Out, in which people are helped to declutter their lives (and these are serious hoarders). As part of the process their houses are emptied and everything they own is laid out in a huge warehouse.
What would be the equivalent of doing this for our beliefs? What would it look like if my theology, my politics, my carefully collected and rarely used knowledge, were laid out in front of me. What would I keep? What would I discard?
In the words of Thoreau: “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.”
(This reminds me of David Sedaris’s advice to graduating students: Choose one thing to be terribly, terribly offended by, and be offended by this as opposed to the dozens or possibly hundreds that many of you are currently juggling.")
Getting rid of physical stuff is easy. Clearing the mental garage is harder. But I need a spiritual, mental and physical decluttering. That’s more than enough to occupy me for this year.