We are forever overlooking what is most obvious; have you noticed this?

The way we insist on the answer being hard-fought and the solution being nearly impossible to attain, you’d think we’d been brainwashed by expert marketers, and made to believe in the glamor and intrigue of overwhelming and unending Complexity.

When we lose things, we inevitably spend innumerable frantic moments searching the most covert, hidden, and unlikeliest of places, usually to no avail. To find a misplaced pair of sunnies, we’ll turn our cars inside out, opening compartments we never ordinarily open. We’ll check every pocket of every jacket we’ve worn in the last year (though we never put them in there), our bathrooms (though we can’t remember the last time we wore shades in the loo); we’ll retrace our steps from the car to the house, searching through the bushes lining the path.

When people attempt to clarify their purpose–what it is they’re here to do–they tend to go off on long-winded journeys, trading the familiarity of home for some novel land where they can explore and “find themselves.” They hope doing something entirely new and unrelated to interests they’ve had in the past will propel them towards their inner truth.

When an idea comes to you, your mind immediately fills with scads of far-fetched, flailing reasons why it’s bound to fail.

On the way to being Grown Ups, we’re learning that nothing could ever or will ever be as easy as it should be. We’re learning to distrust the obvious solution. And we’re casting our faith in the external world containing the answers, rather than ourselves.

This complicating-thing we do, we do like a compulsion. Like we’re determined to outsmart the system by jumping to the most arduously-come by, involved conclusion from the get-go.

But the lost sunglasses are almost never found in the empty space in the trunk meant for the spare tire. Rather, right under our seat.

Your purpose isn’t discovered way, way out there, but realized, like a truth that’s always been there, as plain and ever-present as your limbs.

There are plenty of unavoidable complexities in life, but most often, our perceived problems are best solved by pursuing the Simplest course of action first.