Simplicity

It has been said before in different ways by many great minds; the most complicated thing in life is to make it simple. The mind wanders, emotions fluctuate, plans change, trajectories spiral out of their initial direction and reflections of it all bounce around to the point where you can no longer tell what started them or where they came from. It is not easy to get lost in a hall full of mirrors, it is inevitable and the most common reaction to this would be to find a way out.

Breathing helps, it will fog the mirrors and at least confirm that whatever we are looking at is a projection of ourselves. Perhaps there is a door…or a window, an opening somewhere that allows us to go behind the screens and literally find out how it all works.

But perhaps finding out is not what we should focus on as much as to find in. What is the easiest way to kill a reflection? We could admittedly use force and smash the mirrors to pieces, though unless they are absolutely obliterated at impact the shards will still glimmer and bounce back into our line of sight. Better to just close our eyes. Step inside.

The child had it right from the start; if I can’t see you, you can’t see me.

It’s not necessarily that acknowledging where we are at certain times is a bad thing, the mirrors are useful points of reference but as with everything there must be balance between projecting out and withdrawing in. Presence is a virtue that I appreciate as one of those complicated simplicities. There is so much more to it than just being there and yet the “much more” is actually a process of reducing. Counterintuitively we need to subtract to add value. I love math but even so it took me a while to get those kind of calculations to make sense.

More on math, virtues and balance in later rants.

Welcome in.