A metaphor for awakening could be the clearing of a thick fog or a persistent marine layer that finally burns off. Suddenly, there’s clarity. You can see for miles, it seems – breathing is easier and everything feels lighter. There’s a powerful simplicity in moments like this. Why complicate things and allow the fog to roll in again?
Good question – why complicate things? We humans do this really well. I found an article online by Steve Tobak that speaks to this and in a nutshell he says that we complicate things because:
- We get the attention we crave, positive or negative.
- We’re bored.
- We mistakenly believe the complications make us seem smart.
- We believe that content is king so anything that’s short, pithy and simple just can’t be good enough.
We all know people who love DRAMA and, today, it’s these people that I take great care to distance myself from because I’ve learned through hard experience that their energy saps all of mine, leaving me feeling as if all my fuses have been blown. It took me a long time to learn this. A personal implosion allowed me to see that I absolutely can’t exist in a world filled with chaos and complications.
Scaling down in a big way and keeping practically everything in my life simple has ironically allowed me to feel whole and spacious. I have room for everything. I have the capacity to think, to breathe, to be of service, to connect, to have fun and to live a life filled to the brim with purpose.
Simplicity is the essence of gratitude.
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. ~ Hans Hofmann
Megan Woodward Moyer 