Life is simple.

Keeping it that way isn’t.

Life is pretty simple really.

We need shelter and food, connection with the world beyond our skin (human and other than human), mental and physical stimulation, safety, a sense of belonging. We need to experience contentment.

None of that is very complicated, either to understand or to achieve.

I encountered life’s basic simplicity in the days after I had a heart attack in 2019. I’ve written before about lying in bed in hospital in the early morning, still not knowing what damage had been done to my heart, what my future involved, short or long term. Limbo.

A bird was singing in a tree outside the hospital window. The sun was shining. I realised I was profoundly happy.

The core of that happiness? I was as safe as I could be, the sun warming my skin, the bird delighting my ear. I was a part of life.

Simple.

I knew in that moment I wanted a simpler life than the one I’d been leading prior to my heart attack.

Recently my heart has been showing signs of renewed problems. Last time I ignored the warning signs and paid the price. This time I’m more cautious. I rescheduled a specialist appointment I’d already lined up for later in the year.

Driving down the peninsula yesterday morning on the way to the clinic, the world was again beautiful. In the light of post-dawn, grey but clear, bare winter trees stood stark on the hills. The tidal waters of Mulroy Bay were almost motionless. The pale orange remaining from sunrise made the water strangely joyful, deceptively like it might be warm. White swans floated in pairs and groups. A heron stood frozen on its rock.

In the cocoon of the car, as in my hospital bed six years ago, I felt deep contentment.

I realised how complicated I’d made my pursuits of a simpler life. I have plans and strategies and half-fulfilled intentions. I have multiple irons in multiple fires. I’ve rebuilt my life of distractedness while telling myself I’m trying to achieve simplicity.

Simplicity is not reached with a to-do list. It’s reached with a to-not-do list.

Simplicity is not reached by putting in place strategies. It’s reached by aligning to what is.

Simplicity is not a future state to construct, it’s a present-moment experience that, too often, we desperately flee from.

So it seemed to me yesterday, driving down the bay.

Immediately my habitual thinking kicked in. I wondered what I could do to simplify. My mind filled with busy possibilities and before I knew it I was at the clinic. The trees, the expanses of water, the swooping seabirds, the shifts in the light - I missed them all as I pondered how to make life simpler.

What a fool I am.

One thing a dodgy heart reminds me is this: there’s no point in spending my time planning for a future I may not see.

Simple.

Life is now and life is simple.

And what is the essence of that simplicity?

I’ve always loved the line from one of Jazz’s most enigmatic songs, ‘Nature Boy’:

‘The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.’

I don’t really mean the ‘romantic love’ such a line immediately suggests to our ego-obsessed mind. Though that’s a part of love, there’s also love for the morning light, birdsong, ideas, community, your cat, people on the other side of the world, trees, creativity. There’s love that manifests as fury and fierceness. There’s love that is intimately tied to grief. There’s love which tastes like a vile cough mixture. To quote another song, ‘love is a many-splendoured thing’.

Love for life. That’s the essence of simplicity.

This then is my reminder to myself as I await another series of tests: to live well is to open to life as it is, full of a sense of wonder and gratitude. It is to be in love with the daily, sometimes heartbreaking, fabric of being-in-this-world.

Simple.

If only it were simple to stay that simple.