Less is More

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Seeing the above symbols on a billboard recently, I puzzle and puzzle:  what does it mean?  The best I can do is “Less is more.”

At Christmas time in the United States, there is much preaching on less . . . less consumerism, less consumption . . . all appropriate given our over-use of the world’s resources and our relative share thereof.

But I think now not of consumerism, but of the approach of the New Year as measured on the Gregorian calendar favored in the Western world.

One of the customs here is to make New Year’s resolutions: promises or commitments, typically to one’s self, to do better, to do more, at something . . . more dieting . . . more effort at drinking less . . . more time given to good causes . . . more work at being an all-round better person.

What if, this New Year, we sought to do less rather than more, to even be less rather than more.

It goes against the grain for we can-do Yanks, doesn’t it?

But maybe, just maybe, this is a time for less promises rather than more . . . less commitments we will not keep (largely because we don’t want to, even though we think we should) . . . less effort . . .

Maybe, just maybe, this can be a year when we stop listening to the voices in our heads and on our television and computer screens telling us that we don’t do enough, that somehow we aren’t enough . . . and simply be content . . . content knowing that we are doing our best . . . content knowing that even amidst the hard times, and there will be hard times, we are blessed . . . blessed with each other . . . blessed with the ability to be useful to our fellow human beings, even if our bodies restrict us to a life of lying in bed . . . blessed knowing we can serve and allow ourselves to be served . . . blessed to simply be . . .

This year, my resolution is to make no resolutions . . . to take life on its own terms . . . as it comes . . . day by day . . . that will be enough . . . and so will I.

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On the phrase “less is more”:

"Less is more" is often misattributed to Richard Buckminster Fuller or to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and it has become a prominent motto for minimalist philosophies. It was actually used much earlier in Robert Browning's "Andrea del Sarto" (1855), and the similar German phrase "minder ist oft mehr" by Christoph Martin Wieland in Der Teutsche Merkur (1774).  Wikiquotes

Andrea Del Sarto by Robert Browning

I do what many dream of, all their lives,

--Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,

And fail in doing. I could count twenty such

On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,

Who strive—you don't know how the others strive

To paint a little thing like that you smeared

Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,--

Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,

(I know his name, no matter)--so much less!

Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.

There burns a truer light of God in them,

In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,

Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt

This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.

Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,

Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,

Enter and take their place there sure enough,

Though they come back and cannot tell the world.

My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.

The sudden blood of these men! at a word--

Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too.

I, painting from myself and to myself,

Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame

Or their praise either. . .