Simplicity

At church this Sunday my pastor, Rev. Cosby, gave a sermon on "The Power of Simplicity".He said that "simplicity is the art of boiling things down to the essence. Finding out what is important and eliminating and downsizing everything else.  Christianity is simple.. Love God and love other people. 

Thinking about what goes on around me illustrates both concepts all the time. I remember always telling my daughters that life is tough and then we make it tougher. They thought I was just being hard on them, but now they know that it is each of us that make our lives more complex.

For example, when you ask most men about buying underwear, they normally will think of two issues...boxers or briefs? Women on the other hand may have a whole list of things to consider, which i won't elaborate on. I asked my wife for a simple dinner, maybe hot dogs and baked beans. This became pretty complicated for her, as she had to decide on what kind of hot dogs ( I ended up with a spicy chicken frank) , what kind of beans would be different from just plain old baked beans and still do the job ( I don't know what they were ), and should we have some type of green salad, potato salad, or cole slaw to go with it. And don't forget to make the ice tea.

Many people just get too involved. If I'm thirsty I'll ask for a glass of water. I don't need to discuss whether we need a new refrigerator with water & ice on the door, or a filtration system for the tap, or all the chemicals that are in the water these days.

While I come from humble beginnings and consider myself a simple man I don't consider myself a shallow individual. There is some depth here and I believe I can hold a reasonable discussion with most people. However, I am not really interested in a lot of the unimportant (at least as it pertains to me) stuff that is going on with others. Just give me the essence and not the soap opera version. The best way to keep your life simple is to simply stay out of other peoples drama.