Short Story: Living a Simple Life

The Simple Life is allowing the simplicity of reality to not be unnecessarily complicated by undoing the inherent underlying simplicity.

John was a simple man. He had a simple name, and he was simple in how he looked at life. By being simple he was actually seeing simply the real truth. All truth is simple and if you don't complicate it, it will always simply reveal its real workings to you.

One day John found himself driving his small one tonne van to a pick up site, as part of his courier business to pick up a load of boxed abalone shells for export to China. When he arrived at the scheduled meeting place the boxes were all empty, and they had not even started to be filled.

John found the foreman, and he asked him what was going on.

''What's the story here,''he asked him.

''All of these boxes should be full, and I was told that this would be just a straight pick up job which would take only a half an hour at most to pack into my van, and then allow me to take off quickly, without any undue delays.''

The foreman explained that they had simply not had the staff to prioritise this order as three men had all called in sick today, and it was still only 8.30 am in the morning despite the six am rostered start for their day.

It was of course a Monday! Here in old Melvourne town where invariably Monday is the day where a "sickie", as it's known here, is usually taken after a week end off away from work.

John took this on the chin, and he offered to fill the boxes himself, and so there and then the problem would be solved he had said by way of suggestion.

The foreman said,

''Well that sounds easy enough, but life is not that easy. What with all of the Government rules and regulations, you need a commercial fishing license and a union card before you are allowed to handle any fish products in this town.''

John replied,

''Well I happen to still hold a license, as I was once a commercial fisherman myself until my abalone diving days took a dive because I injured my knees too much, and I found out that I was also was suffering from a mild heart condition.''

As a result of this, John had changed his working life to only delivering the products that he still wanted to be close to, and that he loved very dearly and that had been his whole life for nearly forty long years, but seemingly like only forty very short years to him, for they had passed quickly and enjoyably.

''Your men are off sick anyway,'' John offered, ''Just let me wear that jacket hanging on the hook over there, and we'll keep "mum" about the Union rules.''

''Yeah, yeah,'' said the foreman, ''but each job has to be recorded statistically and the name of the packer recorded, and even the time that it took to pack each carton must also be monitored on this chart. The temperature leaving the freezer, plus the temperature when the packing is all finished inside the boxes must also be all carefully logged. There's no fobbing this off, because they would quickly close down my business yesterday, if they got wind of any shoddy shortcuts being permitted in my procedures.''

Now John was still a simple man, and he couldn't really fathom rules that only just overly complicated an issue.

And so John now scratched the top of his head and fingered his ear, and he even stroked his chin a little bit, for this was the approach in his life that he always followed to solve all of his problems, and by the time of his chin stroking, my word it had worked again. John magically now had the solution, and it was such a simple one the foreman agreed on the spot this time and with out any further ado.

The boxes were all quickly packed and filled within 55 minutes, and John still a simple man was on his way again in his truck held up by only a few minutes, but of course he being a simple man had always allowed an extra hour in his day for such little complications of a simple man's life.

It would just mean that he would eat his sandwiches in his car that day, instead of detouring to his house as was his habit to enjoy a quiet and peaceful lunch in his own little castle, or so to speak. John had always just called it his little shack, and which was his two room bungalow at the back of his only son's house, but which was indeed "the castle" that we all seem to require for living in these days and times. John was content in his own little "castle", thank you very much, and he had refused the offer to move into his son's much bigger house on more than one occasion.

Anyways what do you think was the simple solution that eventually had worked here.

It takes a bit of lateral thinking to see that anything could work here at all, but John's solution was indeed ingenious.

He simply bought all of the abalones off of the foreman so that they now then belonged to him. He then packed them himself, and then sold them back to the owner and at a higher price as well, because the owner had insisted he must even pay John for his work in doing the packing, and following all of the regulations to a tee.

The foreman admired John's simple but powerful handwriting style, and he secretly wished to himself that he could learn to write even just a bit like that. Simple, neat and articulate, but also so very clear and elegant. Every letter in the clean easy lines was so correctly evenly spaced and easily read, and John seemed to take such a pride in simply everything that he so simply did.

The logbook had never looked so good!

Indeed John was a very simple man. He was unschooled, but he was not simple in life's lessons, and which he had so simply mastered so that he did everything from a wisdom that was incomparable and largely unfathomable to anyone else.

The foreman scratched his own chin as John drove away. He was thinking how simply, efficiently and neatly the boxes had all been filled. Much more neatly done than the way that his own workers would have just thrown them roughly into the boxes without a care. John had placed each one in it's rightful place in the box individually, and it took him a shorter time than the workers would have ever have done it in.

The foreman was feeling puzzled. How had John achieved all of that and so simply done, that he hadn't even raised a sweat. Why, he the foreman was the one that was sweating now from watching John work, even as he had sipped on his morning stimulant of a heavy strong black coffee from the warmth of his little site office off to the side a bit.

From here he could still keep an eagle eye on his workers, as they tended to flake off so often for a rest, and to take a "smoko" every so often especially even during their working hours. He had to be right down on their backs at all times, overly complicating his own day. He really just wanted to stay in his warm little office for as much time as he could.

The foreman wished that John could work for him full-time. He knew that this would never happen. He knew John, who was now a healthy 68 year old was really only living a much simpler life now. As he thought this thought, the foreman laughed to himself, and chuckled softly inside at his own words, as he thought why nothing's really ever changed for John. As long as I can remember, he has always lived simply, a simple life.

And so all ended well on that Monday morning.

A simple solution was again found by John who continues to fight the complicated life by living simply and cutting through any needless complications and rules and regulations that have been the bane of modern life and society.

Here's to John. Let's all try to get back to seeing a spade as just a spade, and not overly defined as being now a "metal instrumental tool for dirt digging," and so overly complicating our simple world. We are always overly complicate our world by muddying it up too much, so that we don't then see the simple solutions, "no-more", as John himself would say in his rather broken and simple English.

Simple is purity, and it will never be seen through the mud. We need to step back from complications to allow the simplicity to filter itself out from the mud, and so to reveal itself in its inner uncomplicated purity as only simplicity can.

The motto in this story then is to let's all try to get back to the simple life!

Here's to John and the simple life that he leads, or am I only repeating myself to myself again too simply.

Life is simple, and so is the Simple Life.

I can only add one simple comment to John's story from above,

Simplicity is another word for love, simply because love is never complicated. Love works at its best through allowing simple connections to be made between life and you. Just simply love, and so be simply you.

All confusion springs from over-complication of the simple truths that love is forever trying to show us from all of our life experiences.

Living simply is simply to see the love in something. Love comes from the oneness of itself, and love reduces the complex back to its simple truth that is resting within love. If we only just simply love, all will be explained within time.

To love is always simply, simply enough.