Change
Stepping back
Change is not what we thought it was. It has a cost. The physical law of entropy (2nd law of thermodynamics) says for every movement there is a heat loss which is irretrievable. Buddha, during his meditations, discouraged wanting and desiring and ambition, saying all they led to was more complications. As with quicksand, the more you struggle, the deeper you get. Moses gave rules to the wandering Hebrews, giving them parameters for their behavior and limiting their liability. We've all heard the statement “let go and let God.” In the Christian New Testament, a wisdom statement wrongly or rightly attributed to the persona Jesus Christ said “by myself I can do nothing,” and “you can't add an inch to your stature” and “you can't change one gray hair black or one black hair gray.”
All these are examples of change not being as easy as we thought. While it is popular to encourage people to change, many of us have observed that people don't change that much. It's as if their “doings” are hardwired into their makeup. As such, if we don't seek to change, and the need and urge to do so is understandable, then how do we live?
To seek a simple life, to move to the woods, to get rid of all our possessions, is not so simple. Sometimes to live simply you have to be rich and to achieve this is not so simple. The average person in the shrinking middle class is a puppet pulled by many strings. Not so simple unwinding these strings.
The approach should be just stay where you are, in your own shoes, accepting your situation and also your reaction to it, realizing your need for a solution without trying to make anything happen. This is simple. Just continue your life, such as it is, and observe your desires and yearnings. One has to accept, reconcile, and be patient. The solution can't be forced. Your desire to forcefully and willfully change things hasn't often worked, so don't succumb to it. In this “step back” approach lies the answer.