Direct flight to simple...

So I'm taking a holiday in my mind. That's what I've decided. Given I have neither the funds nor the inclination to jet off to someplace sunny right at this moment in time, I've decided to embrace the old 'change is as good as a holiday' mantra and try out a new mindset. A new template, if you will, to which I'll apply my thoughts. I've decided I'm going to go 'simple;' not the unintelligent or ignorant kind of simple, but the kind of simple that negates the urge to scrutinize life's complexities whilst lying in bed still awake at 3 o'clock in the morning. Apart from leaving you sleep-deprived and tetchy, it's a hell of a drag thinking so deeply so often and for so long.

So sitting here bleary-eyed and longing for bed (despite it being the place where I will inevitably begin my exhausting dose of world-pondering again) I'm vowing to sandblast the residual angst from the far corners of my frontal lobe and 'holiday' in simplicity of thought. Such a luxury is usually reserved for those much less highly strung than I, but I figure I can do 'less is more' when it comes to shoes and clothes, so why shouldn't I be able to tastefully simplify the inner workings of my busy brain? I'll be the Audrey Hepburn of thought processing.

Now such an undertaking is no easy feat, nor should one embark upon it with any less than a careful and wary approach. To strip complex thoughts away one must of course have them in the first place, and the having of such intensely insightful ponderings is as much a blessing as it is a burden. To simplify is to remove, not to erase - to set aside, not replace. I am vacationing, not immigrating. I'll hold on to all this mind-numbing garble I pollute my senses (and sometimes other people's) with, but place it somewhere far away from my consciousness where I can live like it isn't there - particularly at 3am. Because God forgive I should lose my hour-length ponderings over whether glasses really make me look smarter, or that theory I once devised about taxi-drivers and their secret plan for world domination. The world couldn't possibly go on without someone whose level of insight is so deeply profound. Forensic psychologists have nothing on spectacle-wearing cabbies.

So for my trip I shall pack only the bare necessities for daily functioning - plenty of 'walk,' breathe' and 'smile,' but no room for 'worry,' 'stress' or 'everybody panic the world's coming to an end.' It's carry-on luggage only, but no 'carrying-on' allowed. If a thought of that nature should creep into my mind I'll ignore it and move on; like when you unknowingly sit next to an over-friendly, overweight tourist taking up way too much room and oxygen on the mini-bus, I shall simply shift to another seat. Nothing will spoil my all-inclusive tour of La-La-Land. Free from the shackles of over-analysing, overthinking, and micro-rationalisation, I shall sip on cocktails of blissful nothingness and burn my shoulders raw under the rays of thoughtless, carefree numbness.

Someone somewhere sometime made up the words male and female. Decided pants were for one and dresses for the other. Put letters together that made up ‘boy’ and ‘girl’. Strong and weak. Blue and Pink. Father and Mother. Husband and Wife.

Someone somewhere sometime decided you should put certain letters together to form a sound by which you should be called. They decided it should define you and put you in categories like ‘boy’ or ‘girl’. They made the rules by which your Mother and Father should follow in choosing your name. The word ‘name’ itself. The Capital in front that declares you a Noun. The word ‘Noun’.

Someone somewhere once decided that time should be broken into fragments – hours, minutes, seconds. It should be measured and we should measure it. We should do things at certain times. Set alarms, have showers, drink milk. Someone made up the concept and word ‘time’. And ‘age’. And what we should do and what we should be and have and know at what age. And what time. And what name.

Someone created ‘night’ and ‘day’. Dark and light. Black and white. Bad and good. They decided that ‘black’ was a colour, an adjective and a way of being. A category. A race. An entity. The dark black bad night.

Somebody made up the word ‘religion’. Somebody wrote the books. The rules. The punishments. ‘Devil’ and ‘Angel’. Good and Evil. ‘Holy’, ‘Sin’, ‘Heaven’, ‘Hell’, ‘God’. They made up the word ‘marriage’. They wrote the rules and the words on the paper and in the church and called it ‘Matrimony’. For a ‘Boy’ and a ‘Girl’ who should share one of their names and become a ‘Mother’ and a ‘Father’ at an appropriate time and age and drink milk and wear dresses and pants and buy a blue blanket for their son and pink for their daughter.

Try to think about yourself without your name. Without your gender. Without words. Somebody somewhere sometime made up the words that make up a life that you can never ‘un-know’.`

Things that make me smile (just because they do)...

Dogs when they aren't allowed to lick their sore legs...

That intense waiting like nothing else matters...

The smell of clean wet hair and soap...

The awkward/proud first trip to the supermarket together...

That look in (both) their eyes...

When nothing need be said...

...and when a guilty pleasure is and always will be a guilty pleasure

What makes you smile?

To be continued...

Don't forget your raincoat xx