Why be simple?
Simple is not simple, life begins in the simplest manner possible with a single breath and then the primal scream. It might not have been simple for the mother, even in the best of all circumstances, though once the process has started, there is a simple and unavoidable outcome, despite the protests and wishes of the woman involved, it is a marathon that you have no choice about having to finish. Which is an apt metaphor for life itself, once it starts, even if it starts with a mistake, you are on the journey wherever it might take you.
Your point of control is where your journey takes you, how you experience your life, whatever your life situation might be, you get to decide the next step even if it feels like that step is pre-determined and you only really have the choice of a single direction. It is always tempting to say that you had no choice, you could point out all the complexities of your situation, how what happened was part of a logical sequence of events, and there was only the illusion of control. Or you can ignore the comfort of taking on the role of being a victim, of having something done to you, and instead choose the simplicity of taking full responsibility for your life.
As I said, simple is not simple, there are people who find themselves in horrific situation, inflicted upon them by others acting with greed and from a place of fear, that generates acts which are difficult not to describe as purely evil. I understand entirely that the mind would want to say that happened to me because of them, it is true and undeniable, it is not your fault, and never will be, there is certainly pain that needs to be healed from, and we all carry scars that tell us the story of our lives or at least the things that have happened to us. There's no shame in scars or our experiences, whether inflicted upon us by others or ourselves, we have all made mistakes, bad decisions and many of us have had to pay the price of other people's decisions and problems.
However taking full responsibility is not burden but a privilege, it is the reward for working through our issues and dealing with our pain. The reward is a life without regret and wasted energy, when you take full responsibility you get to decide where you put your efforts, what outcomes you want to work towards and how you choose to be distracted from your destination. You get to decide if family obligations changes your actions, what opinions you care about and how you align yourself with your values. As if you do not decide these things, someone or something else will decide for you, you will accommodate other people's desires above your own just because it's easier, society will tell you what normal and you will follow them because it is easier.
With no disrespect to accountants, I have never yet met one who actually wanted to be one, they might have good and valid reasons for their choices, the only happy ones I've met are the ones who have fully considered all their possibilities and decided this was the best route for them. The people who drifted into the profession, who did it because their families thought it was a good and sensible career or they like the idea of safety, seem to end up deeply unhappy with their lives or live the whole of their lives at the weekend.
I've also seen the change that happens when they do decide to take full responsibility for their lives and their happiness. Not that they suddenly quit their jobs, it might mean they just make peace with their decision or that they find out their route to happiness is in a different career. They might discover a new mission in life and decide that financial independence is their route to happiness and use their high-paying jobs for a short period to create income paying assets for the rest of their lives. Full responsibility empowers your decision-making processes by giving you control both of where you want to go and how you want to get their, instead of seeding it to a mystery power that is supposed to make everything fair and just, it destroys the illusion that there is a cosmic scale of justice and if bad things happen, good things will happen is to balance it out, you get to take control of your own fate.
It makes life simple, you become responsible for everything that happens to you, you get to choose your reaction and how your actions reflect your values, who you want to be. And when life is simple it seems to be better, but whether that is true for you is your responsibility and choice. This down to you to examine your own reactions, how different circumstances makes you feel and the thoughts that they generates.
The simpler my thoughts are, the happier I seem to be, by choosing to just think about the present, instead of letting thoughts about the past and future steal energy from this moment. However this simplicity is hard, it takes concentration, practice and habit-forming, there is an investment of energy upfront. It would be easy to just let my thoughts happen as they come, it is easy to react to thoughts and the feelings that they generate. Simple is not simple.
It is easier to live with the stuff that you have, easier to fill up your garage rather than empty it and to buy the same things that you brought last week. It is hard to have less, to give up things that you have acquired and spent money on, to decide to have less takes emotional energy because you have to decide that you were wrong or at least that your priorities have changed which is a process that again takes energy. You have to change the direction of the supertanker that is your ego, which takes time. Whilst the process might be slow, it is worthwhile as the rewards of a simpler life where you just own things that give you value and enjoy that invisible gift of space. Simple is not simple, but it is always beautiful.
