Simplicity

Every so often I reflect on the many stories I’ve covered and written through the years to see if there is some salvageable lesson that might be valid in my understanding of life today.

My reflections bring up a few memorable experiences and a couple of platitudes that elicit a smile, and even a few remembered inspirations for these troubled times.

The unfortunate realization is that there were troubled times then and there are troubled times now, and I suspect there will always be troubled times in the future for that is how we learn and grow spiritually.

Right NOW there is still a major war going on with superpower involvement.  Civil wars and civil strife continue and there are a number of devastating genocidal conflicts that count deaths and starvation in the hundreds of thousands.

There are also numerous threats and secret desires of nuclear escalation coming from the threatening arrogance of nations striving for power.

It is interesting to note that in the developing world one in eight people are hungry. In the developed world one in five people are obese. What does that tell you?

We’ve got rampant economic greed in the markets and businesses of the world and individual fears of not getting what we want or getting what we don’t want.

We’ve got religious hatred of another’s method of belief to the same one and only God. It boggles the mind at the inhumanity and insensitivity of radical dogma.

Like most of us, I look at the news of the world. I read the Internet blogs and the magazine articles for reportorial depth and understanding and then I remember what is really important in life.

Simplicity.

Without it we are blind wanderers through our complex and convoluted choices. Simplicity is the benevolent awareness of an inner knowing of what is right and it is also the Rosetta stone of intellectual and spiritual understanding.

The simplicity of unconditional love as a personal code is inevitable, only the time it takes for us to remember and then be it is optional.