Keep It Simple

You notice the simplicity right away. You see the little clothesline just outside your door, the two bedrooms, kitchen, and living room, and then you see beyond. From just outside your door your eye takes in the spectacular expanse of Cape Cod Bay. Its sometimes thunderous waves take your breath away and other times treat you to flashes of glimmering lights you’d swear were magical fireflies.

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The Flower Cottage is larger than you would imagine, but at first it doesn’t feel that way. There is room here for barely more than necessities, cooking utensils and coffee cups and matches and umbrellas, perhaps a few coveted luxuries: a special book, a favorite candle, watercolor paints and brushes, a dusty bicycle. You unpack and settle into the Flower Cottage with what feels like unlimited time and an equal willingness to withdraw and indulge: lazy strolls on Commercial Street in Provincetown, an ocean clambake at sunset, books to read, bobbing in the icy waves of the Atlantic Ocean when the temperature is 96 degrees and humidity hovers not far beyond.

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You savor all of this, even and especially, the daily ritual of hanging your bathing suit and towels on that clothesline. It may take you a few days, but you are reminded and reassured that life can be this good, and this simple. The fresh scent of clothes drying in the sun comforts you in an unexplainable way.
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Note: The photo is one of dozens of Day's cottages along Route 6A in Truro, Massachusetts, each named after a flower. The text is from a rough draft of my book on happiness, "Keep It Simple" being the first of ten principles that make life better.