Earlier today (Saturday is a big thinking day for me!), this title came to me.
Then, later, I figured out what it actually meant.
And here is the point, simply:
We make stuff complicated. Way more complicated than it needs to be. And we get caught up in the complicatedness of it all, so much so, that the obvious often escapes us. Then in the best of situations, we realize or see or discover that the obvious was there all along.
Let me give you a recent example:
I have a safety deposit box at a bank.
What do I keep in there? Mostly passports (my kids’ and my own), something related to the title of my house (no idea what it really is, to be honest) and hundreds of negatives. You know….negatives…..those things that used to come with pictures back when pictures were developed from film? I was afraid of losing photos so I kept the negatives in a safety deposit box. Go figure…
So I have the box. And I wanted to pay it a visit to get my soon-to-expire passport.
I always kept the two keys in the same place. (Why I kept the two together makes no sense. Supposed to keep them separate.)
I’m sure you can figure out the story:
Went to the usual place. No keys. Nowhere.
Didn’t panic or even comb every place. Mostly because I didn’t even know where to look. Plus, I had to ask my twitter peeps who the patron saint for lost things is. (My buddies @gopalo, @vicequeenmaria and others told this nice Jewish girl that St. Anthony was my man.)
So I had a mental heart-to-heart with St. Anthony. I coached myself to just detach and let them find themselves or find me. I practiced knowing in my gut I would find the keys. I went to the bank to ask what my options were. (Found out that for $150, they would drill it open. Not cheap or ideal, but at least I had a Plan B.)
I tried not to ruminate.
But I did wonder where on earth the keys could be. Maybe this, or maybe that.
And while I am on the topic, what happens to the box and the keys if I die?
Oy….the thinking can kill a person.
So last week, I decided to just bite the bullet and do the drilling. On a Friday afternoon, I filled in my calendar for Monday and included a call or visit to the bank.
Ok, done.
For the rest of that afternoon, I did some much-needed and long-overdue organizing and shredding and cleaning in my office.
I opened my file cabinet to file away some papers. As my eyes rested on a row of files, the very first label I saw, plain as day, was this one:
S.D. Box/Name Of Bank
And even before I reached into it, I knew. There were my keys. In the file folder I had created and nicely labeled exactly for this purpose. To house my keys. In a file folder. In my file cabinet. RIght there.
So organized I fooled even myself.
So sensible I forgot.
And so obvious I never even figured it out.
What is the moral of my story? Not sure, but what I’m thinking is that simple and obvious are pretty freakin’ cool. And complicated is, well, just complicated.
And why is complicated my “go-to?” I don’t know.
But I do know I don’t really want that for myself. So I am going to make a real effort to look for the file folder before praying to any patron saints or paying $150 drill fees next time.
Just as folder trumps saint and drilling every time, so too does simple trump just about everything just about every time.
And that, my friends, ends my simple but true tale.
© 2010, Allison Nazarian. © 2010 Allison Nazarian Feel free to quote or reprint this blog post on your blog/website or elsewhere with proper attribution to Allison Nazarian and http://AllisonNazarian.com.
PDF