Plain and Simple

I think that sometimes life is just really simple, and we make it complex.

How's that for a loaded statement?  It's nothing new or original, but I want to write about it today because I tend to need the reminder.  I am guilty of complexity, when all that is necessary is a breath, a prayer, a smile.  I've been trying to step out of this complexity for a while now because so much of the world is the business of busy, looking busy, staying busy.  I feel really tired of that look on people I know and love.  I also don't like it on me. 

I've got a problem with the word 'busy' and try not to use it, but two weeks ago before Spring Break, I saw a look in my eyes, and it belied the conversation.  

So enters the discussion called 'What I Am Learning in This Season of My Life'.   



For about a year now, I've felt different in a molecular level, like I'm growing up even more than I thought I was going to.  I talked with a friend the the other day about how some of this new feeling is because when you get older life feels special in a different way.  You can look around at your life and know why things are special or are a certain way.  And what you can't figure out, the 'not knowing' has found its place too.  Not always, but mostly, and that is a really nice thing.   I think knowing why life is so special is what makes people age gracefully.  They're not missing out, and they know it.  

 I say molecular because it feels like that for me.  One day preferences changed.  I was me, but not in any of the old ways.  And not just with food or how I live out a day or how I look, though that changed too.  No, it's more.  It filled up my days in a different way.   The weight I gave to things shifted.  I got a sense of deepening faith, deeper love for people and the time they give me, more stamina for difficult things.  

Have you felt this too?  I think it's all been very interesting. 

This year I wilted less often at the thought of hardship.  And I quit crying as often as I used to.  Once this year, alone in my apartment and so sad about life, I tried to cry.  Nothing.  But trying made me feel ridiculous and instead start laughing.  I don't fear being repressed at all.   But my tears now are reserved for a different kind of ache.

There is still a large, inevitable and forever, Jessica-style dose of idealism filling first thoughts of anything I encounter.   Sometimes I like this, and sometimes I don't.  Idealism like this in a world of cynics can make you feel terribly found out.  The natural cynics I know have told me not to stray too far from being an idealist, and are bothered when they've seen me live through bouts of cynicism.  But I still tell them it's something I contend with. 

Overall, it's a continuation of many little things.  And one big idea woven through it which calls me to simplicity.  Simplicity in how I think, how I talk to people, how I age, how spend my time, how I make sense of life.  I am sensitive to these things because the world really is a mess sometimes, and in the midst of the good and the not so good is also the conversation of the simple and the complex.

You don't 'build Rome in a day', and my life feels off kilter and messy and weird sometimes.  But I'm choosing the simplicity.  Amidst complexities, the molecularly and brilliantly simple.