The Simple Life

Life can get complicated. Indeed, the older you become, the more complicated life becomes. When you are a kid you have few responsibilities. You are accountable to your parents and your life is governed by them. They feed you, clothe you and shelter you; they help prepare you for the big wide world. They help shape your character; monitor and encourage you in your education and support you in it; they watch and let go of you when you take independent steps and move from the paternal home, but their eyes are always watching, and their hearts are forever willing you on to make good. If you fall, they are there to comfort, encourage and support, but a time comes when you know you have to make it on your own.

Your parents will not be around for ever, and you have to mould a life of your own; you have greater responsibilities, both at home and at work. You are the breadwinner, the father, the mother, the grandparent or great grandparent.  With the passing of time, the web of familial affections spreads wider and wider until its edges become blurred where interwoven relationships merge with the mass of humanity - there is an uncertain present and a faltering future. Life becomes very complicated.

You are no longer the whippersnapper, the rebellious teenager, the newly married or the matured parent; you are in fact the grandfather, grandmother or great grandparent. Your faculties are failing; your influence is diminishing; your health is not as good as it was. You retreat for a simpler life, a life of acceptance, a life of reality. The world must take its own course. Your offspring must live their own lives of increasing complication, while you appreciate the simple life: a walk in the countryside, afternoon tea in the garden, and a snooze when you please. Most precious of all, is time for pleasant memories - the satisfaction of dreams fulfilled - contentment and peace with God.

You have found the simple and good life. You are a child again.