Bleed for simplicity.

It's simple to complicate. It's complicated to be simple.

Sitting on the floor, legs sprawled, a smile sprang to my face as I found a record amongst the stack of my girlfriend’s collection. Music feels like an extension of my DNA. When a song aligns with the resonant frequency of my soul, something shifts inside of me. As the record spun, I exclaimed across the room to my partner, “This music makes me feel like I could fly.”

Every so often, I feel invincible. Ultimately, I think this is flow state. It’s the state of mind where ideas flow out of me like a dam wall with ruptured walls. Physically, it feels like I could run all day. Emotionally, it feels as if my heart exists outside my body, and for a moment, I get to look at the light inside it.

These flashes of brilliance are few and far between. I read books from experts about strategies to increase the frequency of these moments; however, it’s an art I’m yet to refine. Flow exists between the arterial highways of stress and the side streets of playfulness. You won’t find flow on a busy highway, nor will you find it amongst the ornate wooden cornices of streetside verandahs. The details of neighbourhood streets will pull your attention away or invite you in to slow down and drink tea. Highway speeds keep you on edge, because what if a truck comes by and swipes you into another lane?

The best roads are the ones in between towns. Long enough to lock into cruise control and quiet enough that the loudest spectrum of volume wouldn’t disturb the membranes of a bird’s nest. So you drive, oh, you drive, without a worry in the world. And when your song comes on, life dissolves into nothing but energy. You exist with your favourite song, and a world of opportunity: a world of nothingness, a world of simplicity.

***
Snap.

Snap out of it.

You’re daydreaming.

***

Come back.

***

Simplicity is, as you would believe, simple.
Except it’s not.

Presence is simple when you’re in it. Words are simple when they’re flowing.
Running is easy when the sun goes down, and your feet find stone-edges like they’re flat dinner tables.

But then it’s not.

Because we overcomplicate everything.

We remove simplicity because there has to be a better way.
There has to be a better way to listen to music.
There has to be a better shoe for running.
There has to be a better way to find work.
There has to be a better way to communicate.

In this obsession with the better, we become obsessed with complicated processes and forget that simplicity is often our best friend.

So it leaves me bleeding.
Bleeding because I’ve scratched myself up trying to do too much.
Bleeding because I’m happiest with a record and hot chocolate.
Bleeding because I smile myself giddy when I blast my favourite song.
Bleeding because I’ve broken my hands from the thrill of running down steep hills.
Bleeding because I pull myself out of flow-state, living on the edge.

And the more we bleed, the more we forget, we are never far away from starting.
We are never far away from the best choice, the simple one.

JL