Happy 2015! Simple is My Word for January

NOTE: Here is a post I wrote for New Year's Day but never posted.  As most of you know my life has been a bit crazy the past few months and my writing has taken a backseat to the needs of the people around me. When I read this I knew that I still had to post it because it is more true now, than then.  Just by writing this I moved into a new space of letting go and downsizing, plus setting boundaries with people in my life.  It is quite amazing how the focus on a "simple" word can make so much difference.  More on that to come, but meanwhile, here are my thoughts on the New Year and how my shift to make my life more simple began.

Simple. Simplify. Simplicity

“As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.”  ~ Henry David Thoreau

Happy New Year!!

Last night, well before midnight, as I was reflecting on 2014 I realized there was something I had to face.  My life needed to be simplified.  2014 had been a year of complexity, crisis and life changing events.  What I (we) needed more than anything was to break it down into manageable chunks and let go of the unnecessary.  And there is a lot of unnecessary in my life.  Most of it created by ME!

The words that kept coming to me were. . . 

Keep it Simple.  

Somehow my life had gotten overly complicated.  I have moved into the stage of life of having to parent my parents and at the same time helping my husband with his recovery from a traumatic brain injury. It has all been a little overwhelming and I haven’t had much time to get my head around all the changes.  The days since Jeff’s crash have been a blur of doctor’s visits, healing routines, researching TBI’s and adapting to all the changes in his behavior and personality. During the same time assisting my parents with the difficult discussion of moving into an assisted living facility and helping them make the move and all that entails.  Meanwhile, all the projects I was working on have been put on the back burner, and are now piling up and I have this sense of dread that they are all going to come crashing down any minute. Not to mention piles of hospital bills, claim forms and needing to deal with my parents home and a lifetime of their possessions.  EKKKK!

Simplicity is calling to me.  No, actually simplicity is screaming at me!!  I surrender!  My word for 2015 is simply, simple.  In all it’s forms. Simple, simplify, simplicity.  It is clear as anything can be at this point in my life.

However, going “simple” is not as easy as it seems because I am a person who likes to complicate everything!  It is a gift I have.  The opposite of Keep It Simple. Some how I can make almost any situation more complicated. I have four emails, six websites, four blogs.  I pile things up in “To Do Later” piles.  If something should take four steps, I manage to make to eight or ten.  I also have an avoidance issues.  It is amazing the amount of busy work I can do when avoiding doing what really needs to be done. (Right now I sat down to pay the bills and deal with the pile of hospital and medical bills from Jeff’s crash and I am writing this blog post instead!) You see what I mean! Simple is not something I do well.  But I need to and soon! Like today.  January 1, 2015 the beginning of embracing something big - SIMPLE!

As I take time to reflect on what I need to do to start this new year in a simple way I look around my office and see piles of projects in varied degrees of completion, ideas researched with bulging files, books waiting to be read, or one’s half completed. Months ago  these seemed so important, yet today I can hardly recall their significance. I realize that simplicity is the act of letting go.  Letting go, releasing from ego driven needs and societal based expectations. At this moment simplicity means clearing away that which isn’t truly necessary and holding on to what really has meaning.  That is a monumental task that requires my full attention. Not my full attention as the busy, driven, insecure person I was, but attention as the mindful, spiritually connected person I am striving to be on a more regular basis. When I approach this idea of living simply from that place I have an understanding and a vision that feels comforting and true.

What would happen if I cleared away everything and spent the first month of the new year just meditating, journaling and focused on the word simple.  And, what if, I approached every situation with simplicity as my goal. I wonder how that would change things.  Would it help me get more clear on what I really value and what I truly need to feel content and whole. Busyness and chaos has reined supreme in my life for so long that I can’t even imagine.  The dismantling of that old system was thrust upon me in what looked like a series of crisis situations, but now I am beginning to see them as gifts. When the bullshit of life is stripped away and we are forced to focus on the basics of what is really important, you get a new perspective.  I think I like it.

So, that’s where I am starting.  No list of resolutions, intentions or goals for the year - yet. Just one thing to begin, something SIMPLE.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

Love, Zia