Can life really be simple?

Well, it is.

It’s life, period.

And it isn’t.

Because it’s life, and it’s thoughts, and things, and dreams, and changes, and instability, and chronic unpredictability, and all kinds of surprises and illnesses and viruses and tsunamis and earthquakes and mad Russian dictators.

It’s both.

And it depends.

It can BE both, but not at the same time.

Sometimes life seems incredibly simple and straightforward.

And sometimes it’s more like a cruel, loud, and unsolvable puzzle that constantly needs our attention while we’re stumbling around in the dark.

I guess most of us are looking for moments where simplicity strikes.

Although it’s not, per se, that we’d call it that way.

We talk about success, freedom, confidence, joy, happiness, belonging, peace of mind, or some sort of stability.

A sense of being unshaken, unscathed, and untouched.

An intrinsic safety based on natural trust, as a result of the thing we THINK we want.

But that IS simplicity.

Beauty is simplicity.

Love is simplicity.

Being is simplicity.

This morning I read some pages in a random spiritual book, that pointed out that life is only always exactly what happens, and nothing else.

The suffering is in the resistance.

In the not-wanting what is, the refusal of reality.

Hm.

If you’ve EVER been involved in any kind of spiritual movement or idea or book, you must have come across this observation.

And maybe it touched you.

Maybe something shifted.

Maybe it made sense on a deep level.

People always write and speak about surrendering, letting go, and grace.

Of course they do.

If from now on you’d never again feel any resistance towards anything that happens in your life, a tremendous amount of freedom would be your sweet reward.

If you’d accept EVERYTHING 100%, all the time, there’d be nothing left but flow and flow and more flow.

It’s so obvious that it almost hurts.

It’s insultingly simple, and it’s also the hardest thing in the world.

You know what I’m talking about.

Sometimes we just see this, and we know, we KNOW.

For a minute, maybe half an hour.

And then the mind, our personal complexity machine, will start up again, chopping up what’s essentially one, clouding what’s basically clear, and creating havoc where there’s nothing but stuff, happening.

Sometimes we see that the complexity is actually part of what’s so simple.

And we just stop trying to solve it.

How glorious to find out that life still goes on!

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(Photo by @vlado, for Unsplash)