“Life is Easy…”

“…it is us who make it complicated,”

he said as he casually looked at me over the top of his copy of Men’s Health Magazine.

“Excuse me?”

“Nacie, I said life is easy, it is us who make it complicated.  We overthink, overanalyse, and overworry.  You know what is right for you, you know what the right thing to do is – do it.”  His eyes flicked back down to the interview with Georges St.-Pierre in front of him.  He continued reading.

I stood in front of him with my mouth hanging open and arms outstretched with palms facing the ceiling in a comically exaggerated “now what?” pose.  A part of me wanted laugh as my mind flashed to a little green jedi telling Luke Skywalker “Do or do not, there is no try.”  Was it me, or had boyfriend watched Star Wars one too many times?

Yet a part of was totally dumbstruck, a feat in and of itself.  Life is easy, it is us who make it complicated.  It was so simple, and so true.  I had been stomping around the apartment for weeks grumbling about various life situations, invariably ending rants and tiraids with a huge sigh and the disgruntled phrase “it is all so complicated!”  As I stood there, my arms slowly dropping to my sides and my mouth closing, I realized he was right.  I was making things complicated - I knew how I felt and what I wanted, and everything else I was fretting over were just spindly and distracting cobwebs of thought.

Why do things in life seem complicated? Is it because the world is really a convoluted mix of emotions, choices, and responsibilities – or is it because we look at things and impose a structure of convoluted emotions, choices, and responsibilities?

I vote the latter.

Confusion, doubt, and over analyzing come when you don’t know what the right thing is – I don’t mean the morally right thing, or the religiously right thing.  I mean the right thing for you.  What the right thing is for everyone is something as unique as our fingerprints, and the only way to know what is right for us is to have a clear awareness of our values and priorities.

The reason I bring up this subject is for many people contemplating making the move to an uncommon life, everything seems complicated.  Money is complicated,  work is complicated, timelines are complicated, and the little nitty gritty things that are keeping you in a job and lifestyle you dislike become, well…complicated.

However, after you sort out what is really important to you and what your values are, many of those things become surprisingly uncomplicated.  I remember when I was miserable at my old job and torn between leaving and staying, it all felt so hopelessly tangled.  On the one hand this, on the other hand that, and then on another hand this…ugh.  But one day I sat down and spent some time being really honest and clear with myself about what I wanted and what I didn’t want, and suddenly all the complicated factors just fell away, and there was one true path left in front of me.  And following that path was simple – easy.

We are on this earth only for a short time – in that time we have the great ability to love, share, achieve, and leave something behind we can be proud of: an uncommon legacy of pursuing our passions and inspiring others to do the same.  When you’ve only got one hundred years to live, why waste any more time making it complicated?

Life is easy - it is us who make it complicated.

Tagged as: choices, complicated, life