At TMI we often talk about the importance of getting to the ‘heart of the matter’. All good thinking is about identifying the things that count in assessing a problem or an opportunity. What you want to know – in any situation – is what determines your next move. What you target as a result of your next move is the heart of the matter that reveals it.
Identify that and you are already heading for success.
Success is an elusive creature. Cunning, deceptive, contradictory, dangerous, it hides in dark corners, often retreating from view for long periods. We seldom recognise success when we get it because there is a restlessness about it that keeps it hidden away, a guilty shyness that masks it, sometimes as disaster, often as failure. Both are phoney.
Is there a solution to this hide-in-the-future caricature of triumph? There is, indeed, a salt to put on its tail. It is not the common brine of rock salt nor the freeflow of a refined table salt. It is the salt of Simplicity. Like all exotic enhancements of life it is at the same time both complex and common. You can taste it in a taste-free way. You can savour it with a relish of plainness. You can attach yourself to it as you might to a comfortable but strong leader.
Simplicity is free, but you must seek it.
In expression it is beautiful like the gentle meander of a river wending its way to the ocean. In perception it is powerful like the girders of a Brunel bridge. In repose it is permanent, glowering at the edges of infinity. In action it is swift, but never fatal fast. In relationships it is a hand held for care, not a stick of support. Simplicity is the nod of acknowledgement a good priest once taught me as free of price and priceless.
Oh that we could all nod awareness in our impersonal world.
Where have you seen simplicity? It is worth pausing for a minute to answer this question. It may have been unexpectedly in an exchange of caring affection or in a humble bow for good performance acknowledged. I saw it in the early dawn as the old Queen Mary Cunard liner slipped quietly beneath the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge at the entrance to New York Harbour. And in the silence of a harvested field resting in the moonlight.
Simplicity is the truth of intention, the might of right, the ear of understanding, the smile of sanctity. I saw a man stop in a race he was winning to chat to an old lady who was struggling with her balance. His simple act steadied her both physically and emotionally. Simplicity is making plain the rough path, telling it as it is, forcefully but kindly.
When we learn what success is we may find that the key to its door is simplicity.
When we adopt simplicity we may discover who we really are.
It will seem very simple then.
Good morning
John Bittleston
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication
Leonardo da Vinci, painter, engineer, musician, and scientist (1452-1519)
Do you have a story about simplicity? We’d love to hear it at [email protected].
17 September 2024
