After a lengthy hiatus, the PSA o’ the Week – aka Public Service Announcement – returns with a simple message. While we may think of life two or three hundred years ago as peaceful and idyllic, the person living in 1716 or 1816 certainly had occasional stress and anxiety. (People living in 1916 definitely did.) Sometimes their stressors were life-threatening, but everyday Early American life was usually a more simple, calm and quiet affair. As Americana historian Eric Sloane has noted, the only items colonial Americans would buy were things they could not make for themselves. And nothing was wasted. In 2016, life is undeniably more complicated. The more complex it gets, the less satisfying it becomes. Simplifying has great value. As Henry Thoreau wrote in 1848, “I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day… When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all encumbrances and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real.” Wise words, indeed.
Simplicity. It’s simple.