Simple

July 1998

It is a perfect paddleboat morning. The water is shimmering satin stretched taut between two shores. In this early hour there is nothing disturbing the surface but me, the skate bugs and an occasional fish breaking through. It is painfully beautiful and I am immensely grateful to be here. This has been such a hectic summer, a wedding, a move, a seminar and a dozen other things wedged in-between, I had forgotten how gratifying it is to simply be still.

My ragged thoughts stray to my daughter's friend who lost her way very early in her life. She is now on the road to recovery, having just earned a commendation from AA for being drug free and sober for six months. It has been a long, hard struggle for her to find her way back to "normal". She recently told Holly that she was amazed to discover that life was more than just a big party. Obviously, her perspective had been jaded by the artificial things she had filled her life with. By leaving behind her old engulfing habits she had been forced to slow down and experience a more simplistic life. Walking in the park or taking a bike ride, activities she would have ranked as incredibly boring a half year ago have now become fundamentally important to her well-being. She probably doesn't realize that only now is she finding a true balance in her life because she is becoming reacquainted with all of her basic senses, seeing, touching, smelling, and listening. As frail humans we desperately need this balance and yet we constantly do ourselves immeasurable harm by neglecting it. In different ways, but not unlike my daughter's friend, we swallow up our lives with perpetual motion , all consuming activity, believing this will be ultimately satisfying.

It seems to be a nineties mind set to assume we must be productive every single minute of the day. We are consummate list makers. A whole industry has developed around staying organized and efficiently busy, recording and accounting for every second of our waking day in a preprinted "daybook" What are we afraid of? Do we think we will be labeled lazy if we cannot account for what we have accomplished every day? And more importantly what exactly are we working so furiously towards? If this incessant movement in pursuit of mindless productivity makes us lose our health and hearts, what then have we really gained? What then have we lost?

Well, FYI, here's a secret I discovered on my paddle boat, sitting perfectly still in the middle of Lake Lanier, it isn't our constantly moving bodies that create efficiency. It is our nurtured minds and spirits. We ride ourselves hard and put ourselves away wet (to use a cowboy's phrase) erroneously thinking we can overcome creative exhaustion with sleep. But it is the simple, often overlooked and sometimes boring moments in our day that can save us from ourselves. If we never allow our bodies to be inert, our subconscious ears must strain to hear the still small voice that directs us in how to live not just effectively, but in a well-balanced state. Our most creative selves spring from deep internal storage banks that can only be replenished with regular infusions of quietude. Unfortunately, it is this restorative tranquillity that we are encouraged to ignore by a productivity oriented society, thus draining and depleting our best, most renewable resource, our ingenuity. The truth that is so hard to hear and understand is that we can never achieve balance by piling on more. We have to let go, empty, remove, delete and say no. Unfortunately, easy to say, harder to do.

It is so trite to say, "stop and smell the roses" but I can't think of a better way to say it. It is a lot easier than saying, "paddle to the center of the lake on a quiet Friday morning and sit very still surrounded by nature and little bugs skittering on the water."