Lately it feels as though my life has gotten terribly complicated. Everything seems to be up in the air and chaotic. It’s kind of like a meteorological phenomenon–I am in an unstable weather pattern over the next few weeks during which periods of stormy weather and unsettled conditions will prevail. Strong storms, locally heavy flooding rains with occasional glimpses of the sun will prevail. A very unsettled weather pattern to be sure. Of course, this is a metaphor (I’m a big fan of metaphors), and what we are actually talking about is an intense period of activities around my work life, as well as complications in my living situation. A lot of things are swirling right now. Chaos, right? Except they needn’t drive me crazy.
I’m slowly discovering that sometimes I make things a lot more complicated than they need to be. I say slowly, because even as it’s dawning on me that I have some control in the situation–not control over some of the drama that’s occurring, but over my reaction to the drama–it’s taking a while to get through to me. How is it that I keep forgetting that I have it within my power (if not quite in my ability) to keep things simple? Life will often present complications and chaos, or at least the appearance of chaos, but it’s how I choose to deal with it that determines the level of impact that it has on my life. The first line of The Desiderata says, “Go placidly amidst the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence…”
Therein lies one key to simplifying: I need to “go placidly” in the midst of all the drama and swirl that surrounds me. Somehow even in the unfolding of life around me in all its wonderfully messy complexity, I have to learn how to exhale, slow down, and go placidly.
Earlier this afternoon I was contemplating the growing list of things I have to accomplish within the next six to eight weeks. I find that when I think too hard about them I start to panic and panicking rarely produces quality work. So in spite of the list and the quantity and intensity of my to-do list, I ignored all of it and spent a good 30 minutes blissfully stitching up a humongous tear in the left leg of my favorite old comfy pair of jeans. Did I need to have this particular pair of jeans for some urgent purpose? Nope. Did I need to spend that half-hour sewing up an impossibly large rip, knowing in the back of my mind that it is extremely likely that they will rip someplace else the next time I wear them? Absolutely. What I needed was to calm my harried mind by doing something simple, by focusing my energy and attention on each neatly aligned stitch. It was exactly what I needed to do in that moment.
I am so grateful for the reminder to stop making things much bigger, more dramatic, and more complicated than they need to be. I can weary myself with hand-wringing, but in the end, things generally have a way of working out irrespective of whether I panic about them or not. I know this; I’ve even written about this very phenomenon in this blog in days past. The vast majority of things I fret over, sweat over, worry about are relatively insignificant in the scheme of things. It is not that they are unimportant and shouldn’t be given care, thought, and attention; it’s simply that very few of them are of life and death importance. Richard Carlson got it right when he wrote, “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and it’s All Small Stuff.”
Now I have had times in my life when much of the “stuff” I was dealing with was anything but small, and yet in the midst of it, I still had to learn how to approach it, how to manage myself in the process of managing the chaos. The swirl was happening all around me, difficult things were happening to me, but at the center of it I had moments of absolute calm. The things that I am facing in my life right now are less dramatic than what I experienced just a few years ago. I know that if I can hold the attitude of keeping things simple, not overcomplicating or stressing about them, and focus on the one thing I can control–me–then I can come through this time and these stressors healthy and whole. And while it may be easier said than done, it’ll definitely be worth the effort.
“Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer,” Maya Angelou once wrote. Gratitude is many things for me. Tonight it is my way of keeping it simple by focusing on the multitude of blessings–great and small–that bring peace and so many other good things into my life. May it continue to be so.
