However, it seems like that word isn't really sufficient enough in itself. It seems that the simplicity, the innocent curiosity and excitement surrounding life, has all but disappeared from my everyday existence...and (I'm not going to sugar coat it) that scares the hell out of me.
I'm so happy to see people around me growing, learning who they are and what makes them tick, finding people to share that joy and happiness with, moving forward, working hard but keeping things simple...and yet, why is it so hard for me to re-embrace that in my life? I've been told by some that I'm standing in my own way... Other times people tell me that I'm just being too picky about what I want and that I have to settle and compromise sometimes and where I want to be because "I'm not getting any younger"...which I ALSO get...but I don't know......
I came home tonight and had a lot on my mind. For the first time in a long while I decided to turn to the keyboard for some thought processing...but as I sat here getting my tunes going and firing up Blogger I noticed a small calendar sitting on top of my printer...
The calendar is the 1986 edition of the Salamanca Rail Museum's annual calendar. It was open to March. To most, the image that was chosen for that particular entry would, today, seem like something from an old history book. It depicts eighteen rail workers standing in front of a train engine. Some of the men are smiling, some are blinking, and some look like they wanted to get back to work. The year of the photo was 1955.
You see, my grandfather was one of those eighteen men in the photo.
As I sat here thinking about simplicity and where things were for me in my little orb, I couldn't help gravitating back to the photo on that page of that calendar...thinking, "What was simple for him? Did he ever feel this way? Frustrated over the challenges that were undoubtedly woven throughout his life in those years?"
Here was a man who had been raised in Buffalo during the Depression, barely enough food to go around let alone clothing or shoes... here was a man who had served his country during the "War to end all wars" instead of playing professional baseball.... a man who had three children by the time this photo was taken and who would go on to raise three more in a house that he, himself, built for his family in the small railroad community of Salamanca... were things simple for him?......
Things were probably never simple for him...but I'm willing to lay just about any amount on it that he made them seem as simple as he could because one thing was for sure, he wasn't going to let any of it get the best of him...he couldn't...he had a family to provide for, to raise, to take care of, and to love. Simplicity didn't exist back then, not under those circumstances. The "simple" was in taking comfort in knowing that you had given your all in whatever it was that life had handed you that day.
For me, I thought it was rather fitting that I happened to notice that photo in the midst of all of my frustrations at the moment...I'm not really one for believing in fate or destiny but something tells me there was a reason I had left that calendar open to that page. Perhaps to some day remind me that things won't always be simple...but in some small way, that's ok, because "simple" is a mindset, a mental state that each of us defines differently based on our own own specific life circumstances.
The simple in my life hasn't disappeared...it's merely reshaped the way it looks because, let's face it, life changes, every single day it changes! And there isn't a thing that we can do about it other than embrace the new and unknown possibilities that it means for us.
So here is my challenge to not only myself, but for anyone else who might find themselves in this same frame of mind: Don't let the complexities of life scare you off of the path that you choose to walk. Life is ever-changing and we should be glad for that. No one likes to watch the same episode of the show over and over and over...they want to see how the characters react to the ever-changing landscape of the script.
Take a breath. Take two. And be ready to play the best role of your life no matter what scene change comes next.
[Curtain]
(my Grandpa is the man standing in the front left... with his eyes closed)
