Radical…simplicity?
I’ve been seen the word radical a lot lately. It’s not a word that I would necessarily use, given that I am a girl of the 80s: when I see the word, I think “rad”, “gnarly”, “bodacious”, or“Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” Or BMX bike racing. Or Fahrrads (that’s German for bicycles…)
My son’s very rad Fahrrad from a few years ago.
But, just like mom jeans and wind breakers, I guess words can come in and out of fashion, whether we would want to follow the trend or not.
The other day, in a span of 2 hours, I was caught off-guard by an onslaught of the word radical:
I heard the word used as part of an organization’s name (very clever for an arts organization with medical connections)
I received an invitation asking if I was ready to for some radical structure (I had no idea what it meant, but come on, an invitation like that? I was all in)
I randomly saw three books on the shelf at Chapters all touting radical self help: Radically Confident, Radically Content, Radical Awakenings.
I wasn’t sure why this word kept leaping out at me out of nowhere. But it did start me thinking on what I would want to get rad about. I’m thinking my answer isn’t so different from your own: it was
nothing.
I don’t want to feel radical about anything.
As I am apt to do, I looked up the antonym for radical in my thesaurus. It gave me: temperate. Now, we all know I love well-tempered things. Remember Bernadette, my piano? She was pretty even-keeled. Moderately okay. Good enough.
Well-tempered Bernadette!
These days, more than ever, as I find myself returning to the hustle and bustle of a post-pandemic life, in a new city, with a family whose individual needs ebb and flow, I kind of feel drawn to a word like temperate. There is a certain simplicity that shows up with that word.
What would radically temperate look like? I think it might look like ease in the midst of chaos. Scattering joy instead of seeking out struggle. Satisfaction with getting enough done instead of doing all the things. Being present.
When I first came across the song Gebet by Hugo Wolf, I was completely baffled. I thought, what is up with this Hymn to Being Average?
The poem roughly translates as follows:
“Lord, send me what you want,
Something good or something sorrowful;
I am sure that both spring from your hand.
You don’t want to overwhelm me, neither with Joy nor with Sorrow
But rather, in the middle –
In the middle lies blessed humility.”
Looking at the poem today, I can see that this isn’t talking about settling for average; instead, this is a beautiful example of radical moderation: finding serenity in simplicity and humility rather than striving to achieve higher ambitions.
I’m not going to stop setting goals or dreams for myself, but if I took the radical daily action of aiming for temperate simplicity, I have no doubt I would relish the resulting calmness and ease. Now that would be totally rad!
Going from zero posts in the past year to 1? This is the inevitable apology for the lack of posts over the past year: it was pretty radical. I do plan on filling you in on it, bit by bit, as I get back to my blog. Stay tuned for future posts by signing up for my notifications here!
