We’ve become too complex. In the midst of a thousand sources of information, and the continual addition of more, we’re becoming saturated with data, and drowned in a deluge of opinion masquerading as fact.
With instantaneous access to knowledge, and immediate requests on our time, life becomes more chaotic as it constricts us with complexity.
We’ve lost the art of being simple.
On one of my late night YouTube voyages the other day, I happened across a video shot from a train as it travelled through the beautiful scenery of the mountains in Norway.
Through night into day, from sunlight into snow, the train wound its way through tunnels, around lakes and across frozen valleys. In one particular section, it passed a small cottage, not very many yards from the track itself…
And something about that cottage moved me.
It wasn’t a very large building, but it didn’t seem to need to be. With snow piled up around it, it spoke of warmth, of comfort and especially of quiet evenings around the fire. I could almost feel the imagined heat of the flames from the logs as the quiet crackling sent sparks up the chimney.
I could see myself, my wife and our dog sitting there one evening, warm and cozy in the glow of the fireplace. But I wondered what I would be doing there, sitting quietly in the half-light.
Because the idea of sitting quietly with nothing to do makes me really uncomfortable these days.
I began to wonder how long it’s been since I sat with a book, reading for enjoyment rather than for growth, or coaching, or to understand more and more in this headlong rush to keep up with the many and complex changes in the world.
I realized that I had a significant negative emotional response to the idea of ‘doing nothing’.
Yet as a Doctor, and as a coach, I can tell you that ‘nothing’ is incredibly important. Rest in the physical world allows our bodies to heal injuries, maintain vital processes and even grow in abilities.
In the psychological world, rest allows us time to process events and emotions, balancing the new with the old. In the spiritual world, rest gives us time to connect, to renew, to accept.
But in our world of immediacy, ‘nothing’ is in short supply, and is even harder to find.
This last week, during a consultation with a friend, we took her through a very difficult emotional experience, which caused her much emotional turmoil. As she found her realization, and accepted the truth of what I had told her, she immediately wanted to know ‘what to do next’ in her journey.
She was rather surprised, and not a little saddened, to hear me reply ‘do nothing, and sit with it for a while’.
Because I knew she needed time to process and heal, while she wanted to be done with the whole thing.
Simple gives us time to process, but also to recognize, to dream, and to imagine. A simple life doesn’t have to be one that is lesser, not does it have to be unfulfilling.
I have found that if you can’t find peace and contentment in simple, then you’re only distracting yourself with noise of complexity, and sometimes those who crave the loudest noise, are those who are fleeing furthest from the silence.
Simple is space, simple is time, simple is understanding, simple is gratitude.
Life, in all of its complexity, is still simple.
Live, find happiness, spread peace…
And breathe.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings