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Real Answers™
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Copyright: ©2009 Linda Downing
690 words

LONGING TO SIMPLIFY

By: Linda Downing

We long to simplify life, yet it seems impossible. Just as we fine-tune our personal paperwork and obligations, not to mention handle jobs and families, something changes or the unexpected comes along. Our well-worn armor threatens to crack. Edward M. Hallowell, author of “Crazy-Busy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About To Snap!” says: “We need to re-create boundaries.” But, how? 

Psychologists, neuroscientists, and others now warn that multitasking enhances stress and makes us less efficient. The large prefrontal cortex of the human brain enables us to perform several routine tasks simultaneously, but if more cognitive processes are needed, like an overloaded printer, we can jam. In fact, Hallowell, a psychiatrist, believes multitasking is an illusion and actually wastes time as we shift focus back and forth.  

Behind the longing to simplify is a search for life’s meaning. In the 1991 comedy “City Slickers,” the city boys want more than adventure; they hunger for validation of their existence. The enigmatic Curly leads them on a quest, insisting, “The secret to life is one thing.” Though we laugh all the way, we hang on for the “secret,” only to discover that, according to this movie, the one thing differs for each of us.

Curly wasn’t completely wrong; he meant we have separate interests and callings and must seek to find our own way. He was just a step above the foundation we need. It is so fundamental that it was given as the biblical first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3 KJV). It is the essence of simplicity.  

The complexity of the simplicity pursuit is illustrated at Fermilab, a research center outside Chicago. Physicists search for the “God particle,” also known as the Higgs boson, a subatomic stuff believed basic to all life. When Europe almost surged ahead of America on this in September 2008, Fermilab initiated round the clock, speed-of-light smashing of protons against anti-protons in sealed underground tunnels, replicating the Big Bang Theory, attempting to isolate life’s originating spark. Director Pier Oddone says: “We still don’t understand the most basic things.”  Another scientist says his mother calls frequently to ask: “Have you found God yet?” (“The Race for the Secret of the Universe,” Stephen Fried, Parade, July 26, 2009).         

Something sociologists call the simplicity movement cropped up in the 1980’s. Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” enjoyed renewed popularity and nearly every simplicity article and book quoted him: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” The movement short-circuited itself when so many entrepreneurs plugged in selling simplicity products that “essential” became both complicated and expensive. 

Masters of denial, we lie in tanning beds, “relaxing” while our minds race through to-do lists, ignoring recent findings of the World Health Organization that the booths and beds are as carcinogenic to humans as tobacco smoke and mustard gas. We brag about how little sleep we need, eschewing naps, despite current data that 20 to 30 minutes enhances problem solving and creativity. Enjoying our own skin and resting are just “too simple.”    

“Word Origins and Their Romantic Stories” simplifies further: “Simplicity is single in purpose and has nothing to conceal.” Fermilab’s nightmare is that there might not be a Higgs or “God particle.” How much simpler to believe God is the creative spark! It gives the basis for cowboy Curly’s assertion: “The secret to life is one thing.” Starting there helps set the boundaries Dr. Hallowell says we need to combat being “overstretched.”

Having several things going concurrently is not a new or bad thing. But to move each forward without succumbing to the crazy-busy syndrome, both science and religion agree: Focus on them one at a time. We can do that when our underlying and overriding purpose is God first and foremost, the only way to simplify life.     

Linda Downing, a contributor to the Amy Internet Syndicate, writes “Side-By-Side: Seeking Simple Truth,” a weekly column for Highlands Today of The Tampa Tribune.   "Real Answers™" furnished courtesy of The Amy Foundation Internet Syndicate. To contact the author or The Amy Foundation, write or E-mail to: P. O. Box 16091, Lansing, MI 48901-6091; amyfoundtn@aol.com

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