clearly

first - some great book recommendations:
the shack. everyone's talking about it and rightly so. it's an awesome piece of fiction that may change how you perceive your relationship with God and who you are in Him.
black. the first in a trilogy about a guy who wakes up in another world whenever he falls asleep here, and wakes up here whenever he falls asleep there. and thrilling adventures ensue in both places. took me no time at all to blast through it and now i'm onto red, the second in the circle.

i've been thinking about marketing and how simple moments of life are captured to make a product or service appealing. like depression pill commercials will show someone opening the blinds on their windows to reveal the sun shining in and the beauty of the outdoors, maybe even their own children playing in the yard. made me think that what they're selling isn't a depression pill at all (well, yes, they ARE, but through selling something else) - but the parts of life that people want. despite how clamorous and busy we work at making our lives, our inner desire is to make things as simple as possible. despite how people rarely say what they mean, we yearn for things to be straightforward.

a model home will sell houses because it is decorated minimally with clean lines and open spaces. there isn't clutter, there aren't overdone walls and furniture. but when we buy the house that it represents we fill it up to overflowing and feel unsettled and wonder what happened.

jon got me a camera for christmas and as i was learning how it worked i started really looking at the pictures i took. and i saw so much beauty in them. they were just so darn simple - my cats taking turns sitting in a box, my nephew peering over a balcony and looking very small, my mom with a bandanna tied around her head and making rocker signs with her hands. they captured real life, real simple fun unencumbered and straightforward life. it's what we find attractive and appealing. it's what sells!

i felt like i was seeing life clearly. the simpler it seemed, the clearer it became. and it was just the way i wanted it. regardless of what our life's efforts appear to betray about us, it really is what we seem to be after.

makes me think about all the hubbub of the career ladder and wall street and titles and prestige. and as crazy as people allow their lives to get, when they want to 'get away', they choose the simple. it seems to be in our very nature. so why aren't we grabbing onto that with both hands and building our lives around that instead? why does it just have to be what holidays are made of? why do we wait for christmas to spend time with family? why do we wait for those two weeks out of the year to stand outdoors and breath in nature? if it pleases us so much, why do we complicate and busy up our lives? are we that mislead and greedy?

i choose to see things clearly.
i choose simple.
i choose life.