I Yearn For Simplicity
But It's Complicated!
Glorious Day, My Fellow Traveler!
I have a confession to make to you today: I am overwhelmed.
With the recent launch of my 30-Minute Science Pocket Guides and frenzied preparations for the April 8 worldwide premiere of my movie, The Invisible Everywhere: Believing Is Seeing, I’ve been operating at ultra-maximum capacity. What with daily media interviews, putting the finishing touches on the movie’s elegant distribution platform, and navigating the relentless day-to-day demands of life, my schedule is out of control.
I’m betting you know exactly how this feels.
Nowadays, in the quiet moments before the morning rush begins - when the iPhone and computer screens are still shut off and the house is quiet - I find myself yearning for simplicity.
The problem is that we live in an era of hyperactivity and complexity. Every day, we’re bombarded by a tsunami of emails, texts, bills, notifications, and bad news. The psychological toll of all this is very real - afflicting us body, mind, and spirit.
Browse through the clinical research and popular articles in expert publications such as Psychology Today - for which I was once a columnist - and you’ll see a recurring, urgent theme: our brains are simply not built to process this never-ending avalanche of manmade stimuli. It’s like trying to run an entire household on a AAA battery.
Psychologists call this phenomenon “cognitive overload”- where the sheer volume of choices and information we face daily make it nearly impossible to focus on anything in depth, elevates our bodies’ levels of stress hormones, and drains our capacity and ambition to be creative.
The bottom line is that we’re biologically and spiritually wired to need white space, or as the creator of the universe puts it: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Even Jesus needed time to rest. Yet we so constantly and thoroughly fill up whatever empty spaces there are in our calendars there’s no room left for us simply to catch our breath.
This modern predicament led me to pick up a book I’ve been diving into recently: Freedom of Simplicity by Richard Foster.
Foster proposes something profoundly countercultural. He suggests that achieving true simplicity doesn’t result from some clever life hack, scheduling technique, or method for decluttering our garage. Instead, Foster says, achieving simplicity happens from the inside out.
He argues that when we are inwardly well oriented - when our inner compass, so to speak, points to true north - the outward turbulence of life is less likely to buffet us. Instead, we’re more likely to strip our lives of its non-essential distractions and frustrations so that its essentials - above all, our relationship with God - can thrive.
As someone who has spent a lifetime studying the universe, I’m able to see a powerful lesson in simplicity that others might not. Here’s what I mean.
Outwardly, the universe is filled with chaotic processes - black holes devouring entire stars, materials undergoing tortuous phase transitions, mountains being worn down by weather, radioactive atoms being split apart by fission. But at the heart of all this Sturm and Drang are simple truths - like Albert Einstein’s concise equation, E = mc^2.
So, as I yearn for simplicity, the question I’m forced to ask is this: What simple, essential truths are at the heart of my life?
On one level, the answer is simple: the truths immortalized in the Bible. But the challenge I face is applying them daily in the midst of radio and TV interviews, my cell phone constantly ringing or sending me texts, constant deadlines - like the weekly deadlines for my Substack essays - and the personal challenges, domestic chores and household repairs that never cease demanding my attention.
I wish I could say that the simple, essential truths I hold sacred are running the show. But, alas, I can’t. Even at my age, I’m still a work in progress.
How about you, my beloved fellow traveler? How good are you at carving out space to breathe? To be still? To achieve a sense of tranquil simplicity?
As we barrel toward the movie’s April 8th worldwide premiere, the journey we’re on is about to get really interesting. But right now the one thing I yearn for most of all is the simplicity of a quiet moment.
My new movie, The Invisible Everywhere, premieres worldwide April 8 on TheInvisibleEverywhere.com. Go there now to see the trailer.
Here on Substack I’ll be keeping you updated on all the exciting developments. So don’t go away - this is the place to be!
To God alone be the glory.
Click here to order my brand new 30-Minute Science Pocket Guides.
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Thank you and God bless you.
Love,
