Easy Does It Is The Way

What happens when we break the habit of complicated?

“To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.” —Lao Tzu

One day, I was riding a little metro bus to my destination while daydreaming about doing a charcoal drawing.

Since charcoal drawing was not something I usually did, I realized that if I were going to draw, since I didn’t have one, I would need a charcoal pencil.

I reached my destination and stepped off the bus.

As the door began to close, one of the other passengers stopped it and, leaning out, said to me, “Is this your pencil?”

She held out the exact charcoal pencil I was thinking I would need to buy.

“No,” I said, marveling at what she held in her hand.

“Well,” she answered, “I think it is because it was on your seat.”

Of course, I took the offered pencil, thinking it was perfect evidence of the Truth that all we need is always present because there was the evidence seen this time as a charcoal pencil.

Thinking back on this, I wondered, “Why was this so easy?”

Here’s another story.

I was having a technical problem with our phone system.

I had an idea of what would work to fix it, but I didn’t feel like doing it. Why? For some reason, the idea seemed hard, even though it involved only one step.

I think it was because I was so irritated that I had to stop what I was doing to spend time fixing it. The company should fix it, not me.

So, instead of doing the simple thing, I made it complicated.

I wrote to the company and tried out their very complicated ways of trying to fix it.

I answered lots of questions, unplugged things, and rebooted computers; it was a multi-step process for every idea.

None worked. Finally, one technician suggested the very idea I first had. I tried it—the one-step process—and yes, it worked.

Hello? Why did I make it so hard in the first place?

Have you ever had someone ask you a question that you answered in a message to them? Later, you could tell they never read the message to the end, so you had to spend many more minutes getting the information you had already provided them.

Have you ever done this yourself?

Have you ever called a company saying what you ordered was never delivered, argued with them, and then cleaned off your desk and found it there?

Or, have you ever looked for something like your glasses and found them perched on your head, or your pen and found it tucked in your hair, or your keys and found them where you left them?

Making the simple complicated. This is a human habit.

It’s our worldview training. Let’s give up that habit for lent and never take it back.

I have an idea why the charcoal pencil appeared so quickly. There was nothing complicated about it.

I didn’t get caught up in how to get it.

I didn’t think:

“I have to go buy it, or I need a whole set of pencils just in case, or where will I get the money, or what’s the best place to buy it, or should I actually bother to do the drawing, or I don’t have enough time.”

Yes, I could go on, but I am sure you understand.

Needing a charcoal pencil was a simple idea. I felt complete with it. In this case, the pencil appeared as the perfect symbol that what we need is always present when we let it be simple.

We could all understand what “Easy Does It” feels like if we stepped outside and did something basic and simple.

If we breathed in, breathed out, and watched what was already present with no work necessary on our part, we could experience the abundance always present.

What more is there to want?

Maybe we should give up something every day until we return to the easy living we experienced as children as we lay on our backs in the grass and watched the clouds go by.

Maybe we should make it a law that everyone does this.

No, that’s not a good idea. Because, then, we would be back to complicated.

Let’s live as an example of it instead.