Simple Life
Like many of you I’ve been consuming a lot of media during this shelter in place. Lately, when surfing YouTube, I find myself transfixed by the simplest things. I sat for fifteen minutes and watched a homesteading family make breakfast, dress their kids, do the laundry and apply for a P.O. Box. Shows like All Creatures Great and Small, slow moving and from a simpler time, capture my attention. I enjoy entering into other people’s modest lives, fictional of otherwise. When the world is so full of drama and intrigue it’s nice to take comfort in old fashioned wholesome kindness.
Mindfulness is simplicity. We return, again and again, to the present moment. That’s all. What could be simpler than listening to the garbage truck outside the window? Feeling the tooth brush against our teeth? Scratching an itch left by a mosquito? Tasting the slice of apple, smelling the freshly turned up soil. This life is fleeting. Living each moment; the dramatic moment, the domestic moment, the painful and the delightful moments, without pulling away or clinging, makes the details of life rich and alive. We’re on the lookout for big miracles and miss all the small ones that happen every second of every day!
Fortunate is the person who can live simply in the midst of whatever life they find themselves in, who takes each moment, one by one-the heartache, the smile from a loved one, the illness or the bird at the window. The heartache leaves its patina on our soul, the bird at the window delights us. Delight at the bird in the window sustains us, how we integrate our heartaches make the patinas on our life either confused and bitter or deep, warm and inclusive.
Things that seem complicated are either just many simple things all in a row or things we don’t have an answer for. The many things all in a row can be taken one by one, the things we don’t have answers for can sit as a koan in our lives. There are so many things we don’t know. A simple life has us relax into not knowing.
A life steeped in moment to moment awareness and not knowing feels a lot like being in love- scintillating, deep, and richly fulfilling. When you’re in love even changing the sheets is sexy. Don’t take my word for it, try it!