Trusting Easy

Photo by Aditya Saxena on Unsplash

Sam loves it when I make him avocado toast.

He also loves it when I make him massaman curry.

To be fair, he loves it when I make him pretty much anything because he loves home-cooked meals and wishes he married someone who likes to cook.

But he didn’t. He married someone who likes to muse. Someone who would, in general, prefer to starve than to spend hours in the kitchen.

Fortunately, it’s not a black-and-white situation. We don’t live in a world where I either have to spend hours in the kitchen or we starve.

We live in a world with restaurants.

We live in a world with four-minute meals, like oatmeal, salad, smoothies and avocado toast.

And isn’t that wonderful?

That’s what I’m musing today. Shades of gray. Non-black and white thinking. 

More specifically, I’m musing my tendency to trust things that are easy.

Avocado toast? I make that for Sam a hundred times more often than I make him massaman curry. Avocado toast takes four minutes to make. Massaman curry takes two hours.

It doesn’t mean I never make it for him. It doesn’t mean I refuse. It just means…duh. I’m someone who doesn’t like to cook. Of course I choose the simple thing to make ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

In this analogy, it’s easy to follow the logic. “Yep, Keely doesn’t like spending time in the kitchen. Cooking’s not her thing. So, when she does do it, she makes things that are quick and easy. I follow.”

But I want to make it broader than that. I am a person who trusts things that are easy.

I don’t believe that choosing the hard path isn’t inherently better than choosing the easy one.

I don’t feel like suffering earns me a badge of honor.

I don’t feel like it earns you one either.

A few years ago, in an ayahuasca ceremony, I was relaxed on my mat, floating in a cloud of ecstatic bliss. When my attention returned to the maloka (the ceremonial space for the ceremony), I noticed that a lot of people around me were purging and moaning.

They seemed to be having a hard time.

“Do I need that?” I asked the ayahuasca. (If you haven’t yet worked with the medicine, allow me to give some context. Frequently, while under the influence of ayahuasca, people feel as if they’re connected to a supreme feminine flavor of divinity. Often, ayahuasca will appear as a grandmotherly figure, one you can converse with. Sometimes with words, sometimes without.)

So, in my ongoing conversation with the medicine, I asked that question. “Do I need to be purging? Moaning? Battling through tough things?”

“Do you want that?” the medicine responded. “If you want that, I can give it to you.”

“I don’t want it,” I responded with the clear thinking that accompanies medicine work, “But I’m willing if I need it.”

“If having a hard experience is necessary to get where I want to go, I accept. I accept the purging, I accept the moaning, I accept the battle. I accept, period.” 

“But if I can get where I want to go by staying in the ecstatic, blissful state, I choose that.”

And, in that particular ceremony, ayahuasca told me to choose easy. I could get where I wanted to go by staying in my blissful ecstatic state.

Grateful for that response, I then spent much of the ceremony wishing health, happiness and prosperity for every person in the circle. Wishing bliss for the world. Wishing ecstasy for the planet.

And, if you ask me, I’d say that’s a pretty good use of a ceremony.

I’m not attached to that always being true. I know that there are situations in life where you have to choose hard to get the results you want.

However, I don’t think those situations are as prevalent as most people I know seem to think they are.

I actually think that we can choose easy way more often than we’ve been conditioned to believe.

And, I’m realizing that one of the main pain points in my life boils down to this simple truth: I trust easy and believe things could be way easier than they are, but the rest of the group doesn’t share my mindset. Or, more accurately, I don’t perceive them to share my mindset. But I won’t know until I ask, will I? Who am I to presume to know what another human believes? That’s about as non-Keely as it gets. So I’ll ask and see what they say. Then I’ll make decisions from there. 

Sending love and my hopes for a day filled with moments sublime,

Want to be notified when I publish new stories or have exciting updates to share?

Sign up here.