Week 8, Day 5 – Simplicity

The choices for today were:

1.                  Write down the following sentence: “I am right where I am supposed to be.” if you believed this, how would it simplify your life? Write lists of how you could simplify your life in categories of home, lifestyle, including shopping and wardrobe, personal relationships, and healthy eating.

2.                  Write about the following: what would be the threat in simplification? The happiness? What would the process be to simplify and find your ways to happiness?

3.                  Take a short story you like and write it out as a poem with few words.

The short story I wanted to reflect on was already quite short, but spoke to my spirit this afternoon. It is called Stay in the Desert. The story goes like this, “Why do you live in the desert?”

“Because I can’t be what I want to be. When I begin to be myself, people treat me with a reverence that’s false. When I am true to my faith, then they begin to doubt. They all believe they are holier than I, but they pretend they are sinners, afraid to insult my solitude. They try all the time to show that they consider me a saint, and in this way they become emissaries of the devil, tempting me with Pride.”

“Your problem isn’t trying to be who you are, but accepting others the way they are. And acting in this way, it’s better to stay in the desert,” said the gentleman, walking off.

As I thought about this poem and tried to write this out as a poem with few words, this is where I was left.

The Desert

The desert
A space of non-connection
A space of non-love
A space of non-acceptance
A space for those unable or unwilling
To accept
To love
To connect.