"Simplicity is the Key to Brilliance," Bruce Lee

​by Skip Cohen

It's Sunday, and I got up knowing exactly what I wanted to share this morning. As always, I'm miles away from business and marketing. Yesterday was our wedding anniversary, and I wrote a short post on FB. I rarely put anything personal on my FB page, but between Sheila, the pups, and our life, I wanted to share the joy. This is all I posted:

Happy Anniversary to my honey - What a crazy, wonderful ride it continues to be! Sure do love ya!

Sometimes, the real wonder and beauty in life are in the simplicity of it all. Here's what got me thinking about the topic. For our anniversary, we decided to go to one of our favorite restaurants, Sardinia, here in Sarasota. We decided to enjoy a slug day floating in the pool and then an early dinner.

At some point on Friday, we both had the same idea—let's just say home, chill for the day, and make a pizza on the grill—never getting out of bathing suits, sharing our thoughts, and savoring the day. We made a special pizza with fresh pesto that Sheila made the night before. So, it was a pesto pizza with diced fresh tomatoes—cooked on the grill and eaten while watching one of the early Jack Reacher movies.

Here's my point—the beauty of the day was in its simplicity making it perfect. We love Sardinia, but the restaurant couldn't match the fun and pure joy of just hanging out together. We're pretty much together 24/7, but there are always things to do, appointments, etc. This was a day with nothing scheduled and jam-packed with conversation resulting from multiple trips down Memory Lane.

Sheila and I have been active in each other's lives for seventeen years. "We've packed in a lot of great memories over such a short time," she said while floating in the pool. And as time seems to fly by at warp speed, the appreciation for all the laughs and tears gets more and more intense.

I found another quote that sums it all up:

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”
Hans Hofmann

So many of us waste so much time making things more complicated than they need to be. The "necessary" of yesterday was all about savoring time and our appreciation for life and each other. Going out to dinner would have only cramped our style and limited the fun of a memory-making anniversary focused on our time together. Our favorite memories have been built on a foundation of simplicity. 

Wishing all of you a day ahead that runs on simplicity. Put the complications of life on the back-burner. So often, we make life more complicated than it has to be. We forget that the people we love the most also appreciate simplicity. They want to cherish time together, just like we do. And those eleven-second therapeutic hugs are even better with the people you love the most.

Happy Sunday...or Monday if you're on the other side of the world.