plain and precious

It feels a little strange to go all Avril Lavigne on you at the beginning of a post titled with a phrase from the Book of Mormon and that has content inspired from my scripture study, but really, this is the thought that keeps running through my head, so I'm just going to go with it:

Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?

I think now is a good time for a disclaimer: if I sound preachy (which I try reeeeally hard not to do, but I'm afraid it slips out from time to time), please keep in mind that the only person I'm preaching to is myself. 99% of this blog's content is for me to remember things to do or not to do. So take no offence.

Okay. Back on track.

Life is complicated, yes. But how much of that complication is a natural result of our daily comings and goings and how much of it is brought upon ourselves. If I were to have a moment of candid introspection, I think that I would find the percentages to be something along the lines of 11% natural complication and 89% complication brought upon myself.

So much of my day is cluttered. And I don't just mean the pile of clothing shoved into the corner of my room or the explosion of notebooks and filler paper by my desk. Life is just jumbled. There are so many things to think and feel and see and do. And I fill my head and my heart and my day with things that are complicated. I take a simple situation and convince myself it's impossible. I worryworryworry until a task feels elephantine and far too difficult for me to tackle on my own. I spend my time on frivolous things that do nothing to help me grow or change or learn.

And that makes life complicated. But there is so much beauty in simplicity. The scriptures glorify "plain and precious" things on multiple occasions. To be plain is not to be dull or unimportant. Rather, plainness is often more humble, more honest, more workable. To simplify is to find your roots, reject unnecessary baggage, and center yourself around what's most important.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is plain. It's simple. When it's all boiled down, the doctrines that I learn through prophets and the scriptures are so, so simple. And that's amazing. It's amazing that a gospel so large, so life-changing, so all-encompassing is simple enough to be taught to a small child. Sure, there are varying levels of understanding and different concepts are somewhat less simple, but the roots of the gospel are simple.

So I think it's about time that I simplify. I'm not going to go home and purge everything in my apartment that I haven't used in the last week. This isn't a physical simplification, necessarily (though I think that might not be such a bad idea at this point) but rather a mental, spiritual, and emotional simplification. It's time I take inventory of what burdens and baggage I am carrying around unnecessarily and rid myself of them. It's time I take more time to understand and less time to judge. It's time I remind myself of what's important and what is holding me back from becoming all I can be.

Life doesn't have to be as complicated as I make it. It's time I simplify.