Keep Your Accounts on Your Thumbnail

by Travis Hellstrom

My good Peace Corps friend and advisor Judy shared a book with my in preparation for our Living Simply month coming this January for Advance Humanity. It's called Living a Simple Life and I've really enjoyed it.

It's written by a woman who took a step back from her fast-paced life (even her hobbies and free time were fast-paced if that tells you something) and tries to make her life with her husband more meaningful and less full of stuff.

I'm halfway through the book and one the things that's struck me is this notion of having 4 or 5 major priorities in your life. It reminds me of Henry David Thoreau's quote in Walden,

Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! 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.

In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. 

A simple life can be a life's work and I don't know anyone who wouldn't say, "Sure, I'd enjoy a little more simplicity in my life." Everything we are bombarded by on a daily basis begs us to take on just one more thing, just this one more. I hope that my writing can be a haven from that bombardment.

As I collaborate with others to continue to build Advance Humanity into a successful movement of everyday humanitarians worldwide, I'll also continue writing here to explore the personal side of trying to keep a simple life amidst such complexity.

Here are my ideal accounts on my thumbnail:

• Being a good man and husband
• Staying healthy and fit
• Being a writer
• Being a humanitarian

"The rule is to carry as little as possible." - Henry David Thoreau

Writing

by Travis Hellstrom

I began writing online in 2005 using blogger.

It was a wonderful experience and made a big impact on my life.

Writing online helped me explore my thoughts and experiences in a way I hadn't before. It also taught me that I enjoyed creating things online and sharing them with people. That is still true today.

Advance Humanity

I named my first blog Advance Humanity because, as I wrote in an article in 2005, it helped "define my principles, my values and in someway it helps define me." It's fun and admittedly a little embarrassing to look back at those articles from 8 years ago and remember where I was when I was writing them.

At the time I was in college trying to wrap my mind around my future. Medical school loomed ahead and a perfectly made path stretched out before me. Even though I was president of the pre-med honors society at the time and had done well enough on the entrance exams to be accepted into medical school, it was a path I chose not to take. I chose Peace Corps and, in some ways Advance Humanity, instead.

Growing

I wrote something in that entry that still strikes a chord with me,

"Stephen King used to have a desk in the center of his study so that he could go in and write for hours at a time. The huge problem with that, which he wrote about in his book On Writing, is that he was using life as a support system for writing. It’s the other way around, he said. Writing is a support system for life. Life is the goal, the adventure and the journey. Medical school isn’t, writing, music, none of that stuff is. I am living to live, to experience life fully in my own way, to grow in my own wisdom, and to learn to love better."

I like that.

I am still growing and I still enjoy writing.

I look forward to sharing that for a long time to come.

Incidentally, Advance Humanity is still growing as well.

I'll write more about that next time.

A Quick Guide to Being Grateful

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for." Epicurus

by Travis Hellstrom

It's so easy to get caught up in want. It's also easy to forget to enjoy what we have.

Whether it's getting a new computer, moving into a new apartment, or simply going to a pizza place for dinner, it's easy to get super excited about something and then forget to enjoy it once we have it.

Gratitude is a way through this.

I love how Epicurus says, "remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for."

Things I Only Hoped For

There was a time not too long ago when I dreamed of Advance Humanity becoming something great that would outlive me. I wrote it in a makeshift will during Peace Corps because I felt so strongly about it. In only a few short years, it has started to take shape.

Advance Humanity is a now registered benefit corporation in Vermont, on it's way to becoming a certified benefit corporation, and we just launched a new website this month. We have a long way to go, but I can honestly say this is one of those things that I could have only hoped for years ago. Add on top of that getting married, getting through my first year of graduate school and helping run an amazing organization in Mongolia and the list of things I'm grateful for really takes off.

Appreciating Where We Are

One exercise I like to do with my wife is to ask a series of questions:

• Do you remember where we were one week ago?
• One month ago?
• One year ago?

When you remember each time, think about:

• The place you were physically and emotionally.
• What you were thinking about on a daily basis.
• What you were worrying about at that time.
• What your dreams were at that time.

This takes several minutes for each time period and it's important to step through each of them.

In our case recently it was easy to forget that it was only a week ago that we moved into our new apartment, a month ago we had just come back to Vermont, and that a year ago we had just landed in America.

The point of the exercise is reflection, but I always feel grateful after I do it (without even intending to).

Give it a shot yourself, either alone or with someone you love, and see what happens.

Happiness