This past Tuesday my spiritual granddaughter passed away on her 43rd birthday after a long struggle with kidney disease. It was a day of mixed feelings and emotions. There was the expected feeling of loss, grieving, numbness, sadness accompanied by feelings of regret, compassion, and a whole host of feelings. Then there was joy; joy that she was no longer suffering. Joy that she got to celebrate her birthday with her mother, who had transitioned a few years earlier. Joy I had been able to know her and joy I could grieve her passing.
As I moved through my feelings, I began to realize that joy is a simple state. When I am practicing joy, I am happy, light, and at peace. The grieving and the sadness were complicated. It was complicated because there were feelings of regret about not being able to be present for her, guilt about not having been able to do more for hir and hir husband. As I moved through this last week I became aware that most of the times I have been suffering or unhappy in my life has been when my life has been out of balance, or I have been resisting something, battling with my addiction to food (an ongoing battle), negative beliefs, or other stressors I have allowed to pull me out of balance.
One of the things I have come to realize is the importance of the acronym K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Sweetie. When we simplify our lives, we free up so much energy in our lives. It takes time to maintain complexity, just as it takes more time and energy to clean a cluttered home. As we focus on simplifying our lives, it is important that we do so in a way that is loving and accepting of who we are. All we can do is what we can do, nothing more nothing less. The best we can do is the best we can do. It is that simple. When I focus on what I can do in this moment, then I am not worried about what I have left to do or what I need to do later, or what I did not get done up until now. I am not complicating the situation. I am simplifying it by just being in this moment. So as I grieved my spiritual granddaughter’s passing, I focused on what I was feeling right then. I ceased worrying about what else had to be done. I just grieved. I sat with the numbness and in the ability to do that experienced joy in the grief.
We do not need to hold on to the complexities in life. We can let them go.
What would our lives be like if we engaged in a practice of simplistic and joyful living? What would our lives be like if we released anything, which causes us to feel a sense of unease, discomfort, or pain? What if we released the persistent issues, which have cluttered our lives for years? What if we let go of the negative beliefs that lead us to holding on to suffering? What if we simplified our physical environments, removing the clutter? What if at the end of the day we released the stress and spent the evening in calm? What if we removed ourselves from the toxic relationships in our life? What if we cleansed our life of gossip, criticism, complaining, drama, and trauma and those that brought it into our lives?
If we want to live in a greater state of simplistic joy, perhaps we need to begin by spending time each day intentionally removing the clutter and complications from our lives. If each day we did one thing to simplify our lives, before we knew we would be living in this state of simplistic joy. What are you seeking in your life simplistic joy or complicated sadness? Is it time for a little spring-cleaning in our lives. Who wants to join me in this move towards simplicity?