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Key points
- In attempts to simplify life, many people end up making theirs more complex.
- The things we value get lost during the endless shuffle of life’s minutia.
- A "heartful" approach helps to quiet the noisy mind that obscures what is essential.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." —The Little Prince
Confucius said, “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” Many of us would respond, “Great for Confucius, he didn’t have to deal with superhighways, technology, multitasking, the Internet, or the nightmare that is trying to choose the right child-care setting.”
To which Confucius would most likely respond, “Who created these things?” To which we would reply, “We did.” Leaving him to ask, “Why did you do this?” Sheepishly averting our gaze and kicking the ground, we would say, “To make our lives . . . easier.”
According to Merriam-Webster, the word complicate means “to intertwine, fold together, to make more complex.” Simple, on the other hand, means “single, having one ingredient,” or my favorite, “essential.”
It seems that most of us feel that our lives have become too complicated when we have lost sight of what’s essential. It’s often the case that the things we value get lost during the endless shuffle of life’s minutia.
Many of the people I see in therapy lament: “I long for the simple life.” When asked how their life became so complicated, the initial response is often silence, followed by a squinting stare into the distance, as if they were looking through a window covered in grime.
Many therapy sessions can be spent cleaning off that window only to find that the view is not that pleasing. It can be disheartening to realize that the complexity and chaos we find when we look around has been our own doing.
How We Complicate Our Lives
Some of the tried-and-true methods we use to complicate life:
- Agree to take on more tasks than we have hours in the day to complete.
- Make major life decisions based on guilt.
- Fail to recognize the warning signs of excessive stress.
- Develop relationships based on how we hope people will act.
- Keep a mental list of all the bad things that have happened to us.
- Insist that life be fair.
- Routinely say “yes” when we mean “no.”
While it would seem to make sense that to uncomplicate our lives we should just stop doing the above, it is never that easy or, should I say, "not that simple."
We must face the fact that we had more than a subtle hand in tying ourselves into knots. Why would we do this to ourselves? Why would rational and intelligent people want to contort their lives like a hyper-kinetic yoga instructor jacked up on an all-day energy drink?
Surely, it has something to do with our obsession with doing, over just being, and the endless pursuit of excitement, which we mistake for happiness. Add to this our collective fear that we will run out of time before ever experiencing the “good life,” and we end up like frenzied shoppers in the supermarket before a big storm.
Finally, there is the underlying notion that equates being busy with being important. It’s no longer “whoever dies with the most toys wins” it’s “if your calendar is not packed, you aren’t in the game.” Socrates warned of this when he wrote, “Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” Thoreau agreed writing, “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand.”
A Return to Simplicity
The good news is that the simple life—a return to what is essential—is not only within one’s reach, but it was also never lost. However, the problem with discovering this is twofold.
Because it’s simple and not hard to find, searching for it is not nearly as fun for the mind, which loves adventure. The second is that we have been looking for it with the wrong instrument. It is the mind that creates the complex, complicated, and frustrating world we live in.
Finding the simple life is, all pun intended, a no-brainer. It starts with the sage advice to “follow your heart.” To tune into the often-faint whispers of what our hearts are telling us helps to tone down the excessive chatter of the mind. Fortunately, this does not require trying to force oneself to stop thinking—as many would-be meditators have discovered, this only leads to more mind noise.
This is where the practice of mindfulness—often appropriately redefined as heartfulness—takes center stage. By simply being aware of what is happening in the here-and-now, in a nonjudgmental manner, one is better equipped to take actions that are both practical and meaningful.
With this present-moment awareness, the following steps begin to untangle the knots in our lives:
Make friends with change: Move out of the mental state of resistance into one of acceptance. This is not giving up; it is going with the natural movement of life.
Question your answers: Check to see if you are using old ideas, theories, or techniques as tools in new situations. Asking oneself, “Is it so?” allows for new insights and creative responses. In this way, we reduce the chances of self-injury due to the misuse or overuse of outdated tools.
Stop mistaking excitement for happiness: If we’re honest with ourselves, we must admit that the search for happiness often makes life more difficult. This is due to confusing excitement, a momentary thrill, with a lasting sense of ease and contentment. Happiness is an internal experience that is there whenever we stop the frantic search for it, particularly in things that come and go.
Forget addition, try subtraction: An ancient teaching of Taoism says that in the day in the life of an average person, something is picked up, but for the wise person, every day something is dropped. It’s very possible that both our material and emotional closets need a good clearing out. If we no longer need it, why are we hanging on to it?
