Transcript

It can take a very long time indeed, to work up the courage to be simple to read simple books to wear simple clothes, to have simple days, and to say simple things. For a long time, all the glamour seems to lie with complexity. We pulls towards rare and hard to follow ideas. We entertain our friends with elaborate meals, we pursue convoluted relationships, we have careers that in mesh us in cumbersome commitments, we fill our leisure hours with exotic hobbies.

And then, at some point, we may sense and aspire to the real challenge of life, to dare to sound to some, like an idiot, to fix on certain basic truths that we've always known to edit down our calendars to wear only what's comfortable, to put in front of others. The same sort of basic foods we like when we're alone, to have relationships solely with those who know how to be direct, to leave our days more or less free, apart from one or two elementary pleasures like tending to a garden, having a bath or going for a walk, to limit our reading to books we can understand and to communicate without inhibition.