“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let y our 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.” – Henry David Thoreau.

Last weekend, Maria and stayed in a nice hotel in Salem, Mass., it was her birthday and we went there to see a Georgia O’Keefe exhibit at the Peabody-Essex Museum. We had planned to go out on Saturday night to the best seafood restaurant in town.

I had made all kinds of plans for the weekend, I wanted to give my girl a great birthday. I wanted to buy Maria a first-class dinner (wine and all) on her Birthday.

Simplicity is becoming a passion of my mind, but perhaps not yet a natural state. I sometimes forget myself.

The trajectory of our lives together has been towards simplicity, sometimes by choice, sometimes by circumstance. The simpler our lives grow, it seems, the more we love our lives. Creativity is a religion to us, and creativity is about change and openness.

And in a way, simplicity of thought.

We had walked through the town all afternoon and were tired, so we took a nap together in our hotel room. When we woke up, it was around 6 p.m. I felt some urgency. I hadn’t made any reservations. We started to get dressed up to go out, but I thought I ought to call and see if the restaurant was crowded.

It was crowded, very – there was a three-hour wait to get in. I started to panic a bit, my plans were coming undone, I started calling other restaurants and  found one that could take us in a half hour. I went on my UBER app to see if we could get a ride there, the restaurant was farther away than the others.

I saw there were Uber cars all around the hotel.

We started scrambling to get dressed again, and then Maria looked at me – she is the Queen Of Simplicity – and asked, “do we really want to go out?” My first reaction was yes,  of course. It was her birthday, we had to go out and get a big dinner, we had to eat something, I couldn’t see coming all the way on her birthday to spend the evening in a hotel room where there was fresh lobster all over the place.

And she loves lobster.

But then I thought about it. I saw that might have been my idea of a birthday once, but it wasn’t really hers.

Did we really need to go out? The idea of staying in this cozy room on a cold and windswept night with someone you love was also appealing. Did I really need to spend more than $100 for a fancy birthday dinner. Maria never needs to go fancy, that is not a present for her, rather for my own ego.

Would we be hungry? We got out a snack bag we take on trips, we just grab from our modest supply of crackers and fruit and  stuff them in a bag. One of our few remaining vices are tiny bags of organic cheese puffs, we both love them and crave them. We always share the bag together, there are about 10 puffs per person.

I gave her birthday presents – two funky hats I found on Etsy.

We had three pieces of sugar-free dark chocolate, an orange and some surviving wheat pretzels, some water from the tap.  We sat in our underwear happily munching on our own unique birthday meal. It was, in fact, special.

Maria got up and went down to the lobby and came back with two small glasses of sherry from somewhere. We smiled and munched on our simple meal – I thought of Thoreau on his long hikes eating berries and rice.

As the minutes  went by, we felt better and  better about our decision. First, we saved $100. Secondly, we got to read and snuggle up on a cold night. The sherry was warming and good.

Third, we didn’t have to sit in a noisy and crowded restaurant for an hour, and then walk or Uber back to the room. Beyond that, Maria was happy as a clam to stay in the room and talk and read, and so was I.

It wasn’t the fancy dinner I had planned for her, it was actually much better. We both had good books to read, lots to talk about,  and we had plenty of time to love one another, which we did. I think love is really about being and feeling known as much as anything else.

We both grasped the message of the evening. Less is more, the cardinal rule of good writing.

When we got back, we went out and bought a bottle of sherry and at the end of every day, we sat on the farm before our wood stove fire and we toast one another and have some sherry, just like British royalty in the 19th century, and the captains of the Royal Navy even today.

A good way to cap a birthday weekend. Small is good, simplicity is better.

More and more, I am learning to live small. Yesterday, a good and thoughtful friend asked me if I had considered making the Army Of Good a 501 charity, easier for tax deductions and fund-raising. I appreciated the thought, but I knew it would be a ruinous idea for me.

So much paperwork, answering to a board of directors, filing elaborate state and local tax returns, getting told what to do by contributors. I know what I need to do, and who needs to have it done.

The paperwork is already bad enough for me, I have a bookkeeper and an accountant keeping track of all the money we receive and where it goes.

The beauty of this work for me is that it is small. I raise small amounts of money from people who are not especially wealthy  and use it to commit great acts of kindness. It is just right, and that is because it is small.

Smallness is permeating my life. I am in no rush to write another book for the first time in my adult life. I have my blog.  Do I need it?

I do not need to get foundation grants for my work or take out loans. Smallness is manageable, even spiritual. And this year I have learned that small acts of great kindness are perhaps the wisest and most effective kinds of acts.

I don’t wish to burn out. I don’t want to burn out the Army Of Good. We fill the holes in people’s lives, we don’t perform miracles or transform reality. I need to stay small and simple. I am finally knowing something about myself.

Sitting in the hotel room, holding my wonderful wife, munching on our cheesecakes, I saw once again that we don’t always need what we think we need, bigger is not always better. Sometimes, I make myself richer by wanting less.

Sunday night, I picked up my Thoreau biography and felt especially affirmed. “As you simplify your life,” he wrote, “the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.”

I have learned some hard lessons in my life, as most of us do, and so they are precious to me. I will not forget them.

I have learned to live in the present, not to launch myself on every wave, or ride every wind to the sky. I will find my eternity in every moment. Many people I know are always looking to another land, but for me, there is no other land, there is no other moment than this, no other life than this.