The Simple Life

As of today I have lived 63 years, 7 months, and 10 days. Those are the days of my life, although not ALL the days of my life. Well, at least that's my plan! None of those days can be recalled or relived. One can only reminisce the past, and relish the pleasant memories not allowing the unpleasant memories cloud the present. The future, well that's just what it is: uncertain, unknown, yet at least loosely planned for.

As I write I hear the news channel in the living room speaking of economic despair as the stock market plummets again. They speak of the venomous words of world leaders, and tell of man's injustice to man. The funeral of a young American/Pakistani soldier killed in action is flashed on the screen. He came to America at the age of 8, and enlisted in the military to serve the country that had become his own. He served loyally, yet his father spoke of the paranoid questioning that he endured because his name was Arabic. Just yesterday a teen was arrested here in our home town high school for carrying a loaded hand gun on the campus. Despair would come easily if one is not rooted in something "far from the madding crowd." I call it the simple life.

Life has become complicated, frustrating, and to a great degree fatalistic. I remember my Dad, who lived through the great depression, speaking of those days as the son of a black land farmer. Life was simple. Grandfather had cows, pigs, and chickens which provided the family table with meat. Grandmother grew an acre garden for not only fresh veggies, but to can and jar for the winter. Dad walked to the little wooden country school for his education. I still here him say, "People were jumping out of skyscrapers because they had lost everything. No one was jumping off barns where we lived in the country, because we hadn't lost anything!"

I suppose it is true that we do not miss what we have never had. If we see life as a series of accomplishments, a list of gains and accolades, and money out the kazoo, there will always be anxiety and fear. Why? Because without those things we lose the meaning of life as we know and understand it.

However, if we practice contentment in whatever state we are in, learn that the really good things in life can't be purchased or earned, and express gratitude daily, then we approach the simple life!

My son Michael, and I traveled to Beavers Bend, OK. last weekend to get away and try our hand at a little trout fishing. (By the way, the trout weren't too impressed with our spinners and rooster tail lures.) Along the way we both pondered life and shared our thoughts. Michael spoke of readings that he had been perusing of an ancient philospher. He spoke of man striving and trying to make good and prosperous things happen for himself. Yet the philosopher saw life as a moving stream or river and declared that one should stand in the stream as it moved past and allow the things of life to come to him. Whew, standing still doesn't come so natural to us, does it? Yet, most of the good and blessed things of life come to us at that moment, still quietly in the stream as we allow ourselves the simple life. It reminds me of the great leader who declared thousands of years ago to a panicky people, "Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord." A great proverb simply says, "In quietness and confidence is our strength."

I looked across the stream and there was Michael, fishing rod high and waist deep in the rapids, with a huge grin on his face! He was in the stream waiting for that which was to come, yet totally content in the moment! Ah yes, the simple life!