The Simple Life *
~ Raymond Beyda ~
[Although the land lacks nothing, the strong choose to live an ascetic life ... they do not yield to physical temptation to live a life of luxury, rather they choose the simple life.]
In an age where abundance of wealth and prosperity has become commonplace -- we too can learn a valuable lesson from this verse. When the populace of a prosperous state indulges in excess, rather than conserve and preserve for bad times, the people become soft and incapable of maintaining economical growth.
Eventually, the palaces and monuments that they build will crumble. In America today, we see that the years of prosperity have left our population fat, overweight and lazy. Institutions that were thought to be invincible are revealing cracks in their foundations and an inability to withstand the pressure of bad financial news.
Those that heeded the warning of the Torah --"If you maintain a simple lifestyle even when times are good, you will survive the long-term cycles of inevitable ups and downs." .... -- If when times are not those of poverty – rather prosperity -- you choose to live on lehem -- i.e. bread [simply] --then you will become like rocks of iron able to withstand financial depression.
Availability does not mean necessity. Just because one has the financial ability to indulge does not make [it] necessary to do so. Even with the recent drops in the value of everyone's portfolios, the times are still laden with the finer things. Simplicity and frugality are the saving factors. One who lives by what one needs rather than by what one has [will easily endure] the winds of change.
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* Excerpted from: "Not By Bread Alone" by Rabbi Raymond Beyda - http://www.torah.org/learning/tabletalk/5763/eikev.html
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