Fear for Simplicity's Sake

Reflections ~ I saw it this way...by Janice Brown

It’s a pleasant feeling watching your fear flutter away like a butterfly. 

Watch what you do and how you behave in simple moments, and you’ll know when you’re being pulled in a direction out of fear for simplicity’s sake. Well, that’s a new one! 

We all do this down to the very tiniest of details—walk across a parking lot to ensure a peaceful encounter with our next moment. Turn our heads so we don’t make eye contact. Turn down the volume of our lives so we don’t intrude upon another. Stop what we are doing and pretend to be doing something else so as not to offend someone with our current behaviour. 

What’s a girl to do when she’s got all this going on in her life when she simply wants to be doing her own thing? Simple. Keep it going. Keep asking yourself questions? Why does this matter to me? Why do I think it matters? And why does it really matter? 

I can bet you 9 out of 10 times you don’t even know why you do the things you do. But you do it anyway—on repeat. It’s an anathema to some that some people really think this way, but for some, for people like me, we do. And we do for a reason; we are vested in knowing the self. Self-inquiry is the most powerful tool in your toolkit. 

When you start to see the things you do as simple behaviour choices instead of felonious acts, you’ll lighten up on yourself a lot. It’s not going to be very long now before you simply start calling a spade a spade and saying, ‘I don’t really want to be doing that right now.’ And that’s a simple enough answer.

Not; I need more time.

Not; I don’t want to be here.

Not; I don’t care about you.

Not; I don’t have anything better to do.

Just a simple acknowledgment that we all have preferences, and preferences make us who we are.

Watch a little girl frolic and play, and then ask yourself why you don’t. Why don’t you simply walk in a field and get your joyful jam on? Why is it you sit cross-legged in a parking lot? Why don’t you go to the grocery store and buy one item? Why don’t you go to the grocery store and buy 53 items? It’s not that any of these behaviours are wrong; it’s that they are not preferred. 

And when you see that you don’t do something because it’s not your preference, you’ll realize that the one thing you’ve always done is give yourself a hard time about a simple behaviour. 

I’ll give you a bulletin right here, right now, you are A-OK.

Once in a while, you just need to see that there’s more to you than who you think you are. And when you do that, you’ll start to see you’ve got a heck of a lot going on that you haven’t given any credit to before. You're going to find that’s going to keep you rolling in the bank and dropping your clothes off at the dry cleaners more often. 

Maybe a night out on the town isn’t what you want, but you wouldn’t mind a simple coffee with a friend or a new experience to tuck into your billfold. Now why do I keep making references to finances? Because what you do matters as much as how you do it. And when you start to line up your worth with how you behave, you’re going to see a shift in abundance in your life. 

And abundance comes on many trails: 

• It’s time with yourself and time with a friend. 

• It’s time at the mall and time in the parking lot helping the old lady to her car. 

• It’s watching the sunrise and watching the big game. 

• It’s walking to the grocery store and buying a single plum. 

• It’s going to the parking lot and dropping your keys and finding a silver dollar.

• It’s not going to be what you think it’s going to be; it’s going to be the abundance of faith you have in your life that you’ll get through this ok.

• It’s going to be walking into the drugstore and seeing your best friend standing there when you didn't think you’d see them today. 

And these are the moments a life is made of. Getting out your door and getting into the flow of your life instead of resisting the little things that you think are behaviour that lacks a natural cause. 

Here's the thing: You are always at the mercy of the feelings and slights of self, so today, it’s a good day to just sit down and reflect on these moments for a while. 

You can do it. I know you can. 

I saw it this way.

~ A Girl

I’ve been working with the Tao as long as I’ve lived; and so have you. Here’s what that means to me, I’m a problem solver and I use the Tao as a framework for my discussion. In my writing and my work, I share with you how I use it, and you can decide if that’s helpful for you or not.

Janice writes from the Heart in the moment. She writes specifically from her point of view. You may not have seen it this way before, but that's the whole point—to turn it around and look at it another way.