The universe was simpler then,he noted,a mere dot comprising perhaps only one kind of force and one kind of particle.Now it has many kinds of forces,scores of different particles,and contains everything from stars and galaxies to dandelions,elephants and the poems of Keats.Complexity,I began to see from that tower,is part of God’s plan.Deep down,we sense that we speak,disparagingly,of a“simpleton”.Nobody wants to be guilty of“simplistic”thinking.But blinding ourselves to complexity can be dangerous.Once I bought a home.I liked its setting so much I unconsciously avoided probing into its possible defects.After it was mine,I found it needed insulation,roofing,a new heating system,new windows,a new septic system—everything.That old house became an albatross,costing far more than I could afford;the cost in stress was even higher.I had refused to look at the complexities.Even ordinary finances are rarely simple—what does your insurance policy actually cover?Yet,economics are simplicity itself compared with moral questions.One afternoon when I was ten,I found myself the leader of an after-school gaggle of boys.I had to divert them quickly,I knew,or my career as leader would be brief.And then I saw Joe.Joe was an Eiffel Tower of a kid,an incipient giant.His family had emigrated from Europe,and he had a faint accent.“Let’s get him!”I said.
My little troop of Goths swarmed upon Joe.Somebody snatched his hat and we played catch with it.Joe ran home,and I took his hat as a trophy.That night,our doorbell rang.Joe’s father,a worried-looking farmer with a thick accent,asked for Joe’s hat.I returned it sheepishly.“Please don’t upset Joe,”he said earnestly.“He has asthma.When he has an attack,it is hard for him to get better.”I felt a lead softball in my chest.The next evening I walked to Joe’s house.He was in the garden,tilling the soil;he watched me warily as I walked up.I asked if I could help.“Okay,”he said.After that I went often to help him and we became best friends.I had taken a step toward adulthood.Inside myself I had seen possibilities,like a tangle of wires.This red wire was the possibility for evil,which requires no more than ignoring another’s pain.And here was the white wire of sympathy.I could have a hand in connecting all those wires—it was a matter of the decisions I made.I had discovered complexity,and found in it an opportunity to choose,to grow.Its price is responsibility.Perhaps,that is one reason why we yearn for the simple life.In a way,we want to be children,to let someone else carry the awkward backpack of responsibility.We are like wheat,here on earth to ripen.We ripen intellectually by letting in as much of the universe’s complexity as we can.Morally we ripen by making our choices.And we ripen spiritually by opening our eyes to Creation’s endless detail.
One afternoon I picked up a fallen leaf from the sugar maple in our yard.Up close it was yellow,with splashes of red.At arm’s length it was orange.Its color depended on how I looked at it.I knew a little about how this leaf had spent its life,transforming sunlight and carbon dioxide into nutrients,and I knew that we animals breathe that oxygen that such plants emit,while they thrive upon the carbon dioxide we exhale.And I knew that each cell of the leaf has a nucleus containing a chemical—DNA—upon which is inscribed all the instructions for making and operating a sugar maple.Scientists know far more about this than I.But even their knowledge extends only a short way into the sea of complexity that is a sugar maple.I’m beginning to understand,I think,what simplicity means.It does not mean blinding ourselves to the world’s stunning complexity or avoiding the choices that ripen us.By“simplify,simplify.”
Thoreau meant simplifying ourselves.To accomplish this,we can:Focus on deeper things.The simple life is not necessarily living in a cabin,cultivating beans.It is refusing to let our lives be“frittered away by detail”.A professor taught me a secret for focusing:Turn off the TV and read great books.They open doors in your brain.Undertake life’s journey one step at a time.I once met a young couple both blind since birth.They had a three-year-old daughter and an infant,both fully sighted.For those parents,everything was complex:bathing the baby,monitoring their daughter,mowing the lawn.Yet,they were full of smiles and laughters.I asked the mother how she kept track of their lively daughter.“I tie little bells on her shoes,”she said with a laugh.“What will you do when the infant walks too?”I asked.She smiled.“Everything is so complicated that I don’t try to solve a problem until I have to.I take one thing at a time!”Pare down your desires.English novelist and playwright Jerome Klapka caught the spirit of that enterprise when he wrote,“Let your boat of life be light,packed only with what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures,one or two friends,worth the name,someone to love and someone to love you,a cat,a dog and a pipe too,enough to eat and enough to wear and a little more than enough to drink,for thirst is a dangerous thing.”Not long ago I flew home to see my father in hospital.He has a disease that nibbles away the mind.
I was a snarl of worries.Treatments?Nursing homes?Finances?He was crouched in a wheelchair,a shriveled,whitened remnant of the father I had known.As I stood there,hurt and confused,he looked up and saw me.And then I saw something unexpected and wonderful in his eyes:recognition and love.It welled up and filled his eyes with tears.And mine.That afternoon,my father came back from wherever his illness had taken him.He joked and laughed,once again the man I had known.And then he was tired,and we put him to bed.The next day,he did not remember I had come.And the
next night he died.Every death is a door opening on Creation’s mystery.The door opens,but we see only darkness.In that awful moment,we realize how vast the universe is,complexity upon complexity,beyond us.But that is the true gift of simplicity:to accept the world’s infinite complication,to accept bewilderment.And then,especially,we can savor simple things.A face we love,perhaps,eyes brimming with love.It is the simplest of things.But it is more than enough.
