prestige.

It’s not that we don’t each have such reasons

Earlier epochs didn’t emphasise simplicity because there was no need to; a life with few possessions and plain food, early nights and plenty of time in the fresh air was available to everyone. But for us, simplicity plays the role that splendour once did for the aristocrats at Versailles or that rugged individualism did for the urban 20th-century a

We mustn’t compare our inner reality with the deceptive façades of those around us.

People are more attractive and sophisticated

for the mind to order and understand itself.

Receptivity, appreciation and gratitude

Simplicity isn’t so much a life with few things and commitments in it, as a life with the right, necessary things, attuned to our flourishing. Our lives will feel – and be – simpler when we’ve probed our minds to yield up their most secret and precious insight: the knowledge of what we truly want.

What if our real problem is not that we haven’t had time to travel enough – but that we don’t know how to make the most of what is already to hand?