The Art of Simplicity

 It takes courage to be simple. It can take a long time to be simple.

Wear simple clothes, have simple and uncomplicated days, read books that pull our heartstrings, eat simple food, and have simple and uncomplicated conversations with simple people with whom we have non-complex relationships – it can make life a little easier.

The power of simplicity lies in its ability to cut through the noise and complexity of modern life, revealing clarity, efficiency, and authenticity. It offers a refreshing antidote. In its simplicity, there is strength, resilience, and timeless wisdom, reminding us that often, less is more.

I used to look at people with awe who would talk in convoluted language, who could talk about ideas that are quite esoteric; I still do. Even now, the harder it is for me to comprehend a technical paper from the research world, the cognitive bias in my mind rates the paper higher. Although I don’t get enamoured anymore with the folks who hide under the cloak of complex language; Now I know that most people just fake it and try to use intricate language to hide the glaring gaps in their persona or knowledge. 

We like the glamour or elaboration and the complexity that ensues from it, we have meals that are elaborate and have an algorithm for their consumption, we pursue complicated relationships, we have careers that bind us in certain commitments, and we have exotic hobbies which we acquire to fill our hours.

The locus of it all lies outside our personality, for most of us.

Then, in all this oddity and complexity, we try to find a few moments of simplicity. The simplicity of comfort food, simplicity of entertainment, simplicity of ideas, simplicity of reading books we adore; things that come naturally to us, the ones that can reveal our core.

Most of the time we worry about sounding silly, boring, and uninspired, if we were to show our true selves without any elaboration or if we don’t live according to our adorned inclinations then the world would ostracise us.

That never happens, we tend to overestimate the amount of real estate we occupy in other’s minds than we actually do.

Some of the most interesting people I have met in my life were missing a button on their shirts or had holes in their pants, and most of them would quote a simple and inexpensive street food as their favourite meal.

We spend the major part of our lives trying unsuccessfully to be somebody else. It requires an epiphany or the eventual realisation that our time on earth is limited and we can’t be permanently ensconced here that helps loosen our pretensions.

We eventually realise that there is no scope for habits, ideas, cohorts, people, or duties that don’t belong to us. We can’t ill afford to spend time with those who can’t have the audacity to be vulnerable in front of us, we shouldn’t fill our houses with books that we have never read in the name of a library and that have given us nothing except a wall of books, we shouldn’t have clothes that we can’t keep clean or have any occasion to wear them, we can’t afford to heavily burden our days with panic and meaningless challenges.

Only then, do we finally lose our terror of coming across as a simpleton. Only that will lead to some maturity and sophistication of personality. We might have to go through a labyrinth of complications but the end is satisfying and freeing.

Eventually, we’ll learn to appreciate the art of being direct, easy to follow, emotionally straightforward, predictable, unhurried, calm, and maybe to the eyes of the frantic and impressionable – exceptionally dull.