During a recent workshop titled happiness and success I asked, “How do you want your life to be remembered?” One yelled out, “I don’t want to be remembered!” Another girl told her partner, “I want to live a simple life.” Her partner responded passionately, “People always say ‘I want to be simple’ but they don’t know what it means!” The girl’s eyes lit up with a thousand smiles and nodded in confession. He continued, “I also want to be simple and really want to know how.”
Death is the best teacher on living simply so I followed with, “on your final breath what advice would you give yourself today?” People said things like, “Accept things as they are” and “follow your heart.” Then I asked them to write or draw something that expressed this feeling.
Setting a life goal is a meditative act, and the point is not the goal but the journey that attracts it. Any effort for achievement is inherently simple, a gentle letting go, until all you’re left with is the essential feeling that got you started, where one arrives at the end of expectations. In the words of Lao Tzu:
By letting go, it all gets done;
The world is won by those who let it go!
But when you try and try,
The world is then beyond the winning.
Last year when I was thinking about my next steps, I decided I want to do something that fevers my passion, like teaching, somewhere that offers comfortable pay. I would have never expected that this decision would lead me to China for a time of my life.
Happiness is closeness to the essence of things,
not as a mental puzzle but a felt-sense inside,
simple or complex, fast or slow like honey,
I saw you at the edge of emptiness and quietly fell in.
At the end of the workshop the man merrily admitted, “Sometimes I’m confused.”
“Confusion is a good dance partner,” I replied.
Once during dinner I was talking with Andy and I quoted a dear friend, “Death is the invisible mold of everyday life.” He mistakenly repeated, “Death is the invisible mole of everyday life…” and genuinely considered it.
I died laughing.