The complexity stick

It’s 12:01 AM. I’m still half-dressed, and dawdling to get ready for bed. Listening to a really great album, which is making me very happy. I think about what I have and I can only be thankful.

But, there is something that pulls on the inside of me—a memory of something that once was but is now fading. It’s 12:03 AM. And there was once a time where that very simple fact would have meant a world of things: excitement, anxiety, dread, joy, rebellion, empowerment. I would have ignored the fact that my eyelids were sagging, ready to fall in a heap like the ceiling of the chook shed out the back of our old place, buried under a mountain of pine needles. There was a time when being up at midnight was a triumph over all that big people told us about being kids.

And so this question crossed my mind: why is staying up past my bedtime no longer magical—merely impractical?

I don’t mean that flaunting authority is a joy I generally want to return to. I think I want the simplicity back in my life. The words of a great song come to mind: “God is not a white man.” What is God? He is love. What is love? Love is laying down your life for another. It is no overstatement to say that that is simply what God is: one who laid his life down, not for one, but for all.

Really, it’s very simple.

So why am I not? Humanity has a habit of glorifying complexity. “Gritty” movies are hailed as masterpieces, whilst wonderfully simple stories of love and loyalty perform poorly. I wonder if someone hit me with the complexity stick too many times. I wonder if it was me.

So as I sit here, I’m deciding to marvel at one simple fact. I’m up past my bedtime. And I like it. I’m happy.