High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘Simplicity’

One shining gesture of cheer can illumine the deepest gloom.  One act of kindness, or courage, can revive hope that’s fading away.

Think of the power you hold.  One act of grace.  One smiling glance, one touch, one word.

Think of the easiness of giving.  Think of the simplicity.  You could be the spark.  You could light the flame.  You could be the one that saves somebody’s day.

One shining gesture can illumine the deepest gloom.  Let it be yours; let it be you.

So often the sublime simplicity of the ordinary – the daylight, the unassuming roadside flowers – waltzes past us unobserved.  But right there, in plain sight, happiness writes its secrets for all of us to see.

It speaks its truths in the laughter of children.  It sings through wee birds and the crickets in the grass.  It shines in the morning dew.  It’s most profound formulas are resolved in a smile.

We make of our lives such complex tales.  We tie ourselves in knots seeking more, hoarding great stores of the useless, rushing to pile up heaps of the unnecessary.  We drag such luggage with us everywhere we go.  No wonder we are weary!

Let it all go, in the name of freedom.  Happiness isn’t a complicated affair.  It’s the simple goodness of sunshine, of kindness, of ease.  It doesn’t need embroidery or a shoeshine.  It carries the essence of beauty in its harmony and grace.

There’s nothing in it that you need to grasp or reach for.  It falls most easily into your open hand.  It doesn’t demand that you win the race.  Although it waits, amused, at the finish line to greet you, it strolls through the crowd of watchers as well, and dances with the never-rans.  It has no standard but purity of heart.

And so it hides, right there in plain sight, in the sublime simplicity of the ordinary and familiar, waiting for you to let go of the striving that keeps you from seeing it, in all its radiant, easy, everywhere truth.

Once, when my friend Holly and I were grocery shopping together, she stopped suddenly in the midst of the produce section, looked around with an expression of awe on her face and with a sweep of her arm said, “Look!  Right here.  Everything we need to live.”

I often think of her comment when I’m shopping.  And happily, my favorite grocery store is arranged so that my shopping begins in the midst of the produce section’s bounty.

Remembering how simple my needs truly are allows me to shop mindfully, to be peacefully content and pleased with the items on my list even as I stroll past the dazzling displays of products and packaging meant to tempt me.  Instead of being pulled by some vague unnamed desire, I’m free to enjoy and marvel at the variety of the store’s offerings—the imported delicacies, the fragrances, the artistry of the packaging, the sheer abundance of it all.

To be aware of the simplicity of your needs is freeing.  It cleanses you from the grasping feeling that you somehow require more and more.  It allows you to feel contentment and ease.  It opens your heart to appreciation for the abundance with which you are surrounded and provides you with a satisfying enjoyment of all that you possess.  It shrinks your assessment of enough and expands your view of plenty.  And because it puts enough so easily into your hands, it kindles your generosity and inspires you to share.

The next time you’re in a grocery store, stop for a moment in the produce section and look around at the miracle of it.  Let it inspire you.  See what happens.

Among all the wildflowers that springtime brings, the tiny forget-me-not touches my heart the most.  Its name, of course, makes it impossible not to invent stories in your mind.  I imagine a little spray of them pressed between the pages of a book, holding a place in someone’s thoughts for a distant lover.

They’re so small, each blossom no bigger than a quarter inch, and so sweet and unpretentious.   I think it’s their innocence that speaks to me.  They’re such honest little flowers, tokens of a simple goodness, happy and bright.

We make our lives so complex and cluttered with our all our fevered strivings to have more, know more, be more, do more, thinking somehow that more is the key, that there’s a magic “enough” that will fill us.

Then along comes this little flower, beaming gladness as it bobs in the grass, a token from a cosmic lover, tucked in the day to remind us not to forget.  With nothing elaborate about it at all, it sings its effortless truth: just be.  Happiness flows most freely when our hearts and minds rest in simplicity, after all, without the need for pretense or show.

Perhaps we should all have a little sprig of these flowers to carry in our wallets where we would find them and silently repeat their name to ourselves – forget-me-not – as a reminder.  Just be.  You are loved.  And happiness is as simple as that.

I listened to the brook today, and it sang this little song . . .

‘Tis the gift to be simple,
’tis the gift to be free,
’tis the gift to come down
where we ought to be,
and when we find ourselves in the place just right,
’twill be in the valley of love and delight.

~Shaker Hymn

If you would like  to hear the melody, here’s one rendition I especially liked.  Or search for “Simple Gifts” at youtube.com and find one that pleases you.

And that’s my simple happiness gift to you today.  Enjoy!

I laughed today thinking how many words I’ve written about happiness since I began this blog, when it is, after all, such a simple thing.  And then I felt a kind of compassion for us all, that we work so hard at it and make it so complex.

Happiness is such an easy state of being.  It’s not something you strive to obtain as much as something into which you relax.  You don’t increase your experience of it by adding more things, or drama, or complications to your life, but by releasing the things that stand in its way.  You don’t have to dig for it, or climb towards it, or run after it with a net.  You just breathe it.

You don’t have to hunt it down; it’s everywhere.  You don’t have to build or create it; it already is.  Right here.  Right now.  Like air.  Like light.  It’s not something you have to earn or win or deserve.  It’s already yours, given to you as freely and naturally as your life is given, as much a part of you as the blood that flows through your veins, the oxygen that courses through your lungs, the spark and crackle of the joyous song of movement continuously playing through the nerve and muscle of you.

And all that blinds you to it is the make-believe of stories you tell yourself and a dream that things are otherwise.

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At it’s sweetest, happiness is so simple.

Here’s the recipe:  look out at the world through eyes of love and smile.