Monday, August 6, 2007

Small and Simple

Many a time I find myself bogged down in the drudgery of day to day living. So much of our time is spent in the day to day maintenance required for living: eating, cleaning, sleeping, things we have to do every day, day after day, just to maintain life and comfort and health. By no means am I a perfectionist when it comes to cleaning, but I am much happier when my house is presentable.

Sometimes, I dream of escape from the daily grind, but even on vacation, we have to eat and brush teeth and maintain order in our space and go to sleep and wake up and do it all again; granted in a hotel, you don't have to do nearly as much cleaning and in a restaurant you don't have to prepare your own food, but those things are too expensive to do for very long or often.

I wish that food preparation were more interesting to me. I do think it is a valuable skill to be able to bring flavors and textures and colors of food together in a healthy and varied enough way to bring interest and joy to eating, and it can be a great family bonding time to all be in the kitchen working together. We would also be in better health if we ate foods grown locally, in season. That's something I want to work on, but not really.

I was teasing my kids about eating, one was complaining of hunger, and I jokingly said, "What's the point in eating, you're just going to get hungry again." One of them responded, "Well, if you quit eating, you eventually won't be hungry ever again." I said, "That's true." Then we immediately went home and ate lunch.

My point is: Life is precious and is meant to be enjoyed. Certainly sleep and good food are a big part of that, considering we spend about a third of our lives sleeping (8 out of every 24 hours), and about 8 percent of our lives eating (half an hour for breakfast & lunch + 1 hour for dinner = 2 hours out of every 24), not including prep time, cooking and clean-up...rambling again... back to the point...

I am a person of faith, and surely there is wisdom in God in the order of this universe.

Surely there must be a reason why we are set up on a daily schedule, doing mostly the same things day after day.
And I think the answer is found in this verse in the Book of Mormon:
Alma 37:6
"Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise."

I tire of repetition, but what am I supposed to learn from it? This is the thing to think about.