The Simple Life

There are many things that throughout the course of my life I have enjoyed. Many of these things I do still enjoy, yet of late I have come to discover the many things I no longer do. The question I had to ask myself predominantly; why? The essence of this marvel of recollection came from one quite simple occurrence just the other day. That being, seeing and hearing a robin perched in a tree roughly ten feet away from where I was perched myself, singing (the robin, not me). That's it, a simple solitary songbird of no particular luminosity, plain old robin red breast, sort of the colour of a blood orange, with the light greyish-brown colouring of the average robin, in an average tree adorned with simple average green leaves. Not a spectacle to behold no matter how you looked at it really, yet I was reminded of the simplicity of the beauty of nature that I was witnessing.

All of my life I have been of a school of thought as to see the beauty in everything around me. I suppose this would have a fair amount to do with the way I was raised, respect your elders, mind your P's and Q's, church on Sundays, get a good education, things generally referred to as an individual's personal values. Easy enough when you are a kid, because if you should happen to tell grandma to go and screw herself simply because you did not wish to eat your brussel sprouts, well you knew full well you were going to see the back of Daddy's hand across your hind quarters repeatedly later that day, or quite possibly right there at the dinner table in front of the rest of the extended family. As a child we tend to learn things the hard way, and usually will not repeat such indiscretions any time soon.

To forget about the simple things in life, the things that you really do not have any control over, nor should you, why mess with perfection? Yet a robin? Would anybody think such a tiny little speck of nature in the grand scheme of things would have such an enormous effect on one's mindset? When I was a boy, I and my brothers spent a fair amount of time, when we were not in school, communing with nature. Oddly though this is not where my thoughts went when confronted with this seemingly mocking little bird. All our spare time was spent in the woods, and all three of us had been taught to have a great respect for nature, and the love of the beauty of such—and all of God's creatures. Just another part of the upbringing that we really have absolutely no realization of when we are kids, and tend to forget; 'tumbleweeds of the brain' if you will, until we do reach adulthood, and that appreciation seems to return. Life just gets way too busy to appreciate the little things anymore, the need of a road-map as to why we even had the respect of such to begin with baffles us, if it even crosses our minds in the first place.

Funny. We had so many wonderful times as boys just playing in the damn woods. None of this computer games nonsense, the incessant need to be on-line thirty hours a day, (I say this as I type on a computer), no game-boys, shit we had an Atari, and the only game available was called 'Pong'. Truly, the only game at the time. We built tree forts, real tree forts, not the kind now purchased at Home Depot, pre-made, and even delivered on the back of a flat-bed truck, and installed in your tree at your damn home if you so desired. No we had to steal our wood and nails, and haul all of it into the woods all by our little lonesomes, and then build the damn things from the knowledge we had acquired either from our fathers or grandfathers, or God forbid, we had to read it from a book. Yes we went out of our way to do research from books, books! Ah, those were the days...

This is not where I started out with this story is it?I was talking about a robin... I do have this tendency to go off on these little tangents every now and then. Anyway, the whole point of the robin itself was that I had forgotten about my appreciation of the simple things in life, the things that can and will happen every single day, and because of that simplicity, we forget about the big picture, that road map to life we take so much for granted that at one time or another meant so very much to us. We have blinders on to the real beauty of the world going on around us, and it is a damn shame. It's time to stop thinking for a moment or two, and just get back to that place that made us, and put us where we are today; the simple things. And no, when I say 'the simple things' I am NOT referring to that trash that Paris Hilton, heiress to the Hilton hotel chain Paris Hilton, and Lionel Ritchie's ding dong of a daughter Nicole, referred to as REALITY TV. Believe it or not I did find that quite amusing, especially the part where poor hard done by Paris fell off her horse, because she was being an idiot and had to be air-lifted to the closest high-brow medical facility, because God forbid she may have broken a nail! I shit you not.

That not so unique little robin reminded me not of the woods or being a boy doing manual labour for our own benefit simply because this is what we desired to do at the time. No, it reminded me of my beautiful little girl, the times we spent together at the local park, and me teaching her all of the wonderful things I learned as a child that I had let slip my mind, because for whatever reason (tumbleweeds of the brain again) they were not important enough anymore.

I wonder if she will have the same lapse in memory as myself when she reaches the big 5-0? I would hope not. My hopes are that when she has children of her own that she, as I have, repeats the same process with her own children, so she also in turn can have these recollections of the times, such precious times spent with your children and possibly, hopefully forgetting about the big bad ugly world we live in, if only for a short time...

The Simple Life...