On Simplicity, Part 1

Posted on May 25th, 2011 by Eric Dodds and currently 5 commenting.

This past weekend my family went to an outdoor graduation party for my youngest brother. Summer has already knocked on our door in the South, so watermelon was appropriately accompanied by giant, ice-filled buckets of water, soda and sweet tea. I was amazed at how captivated my niece and nephew were with the sweating metal tubs. At two-and-a-half and 16 months, I know that it doesn’t take much to make them happy (when they’re well slept, at least), but they stopped a few of us in our tracks with their unrestrained cries of elation. I think the adults watching them splash in the mini-arctic were jealous of how easy it was for children to find satisfaction in the commonplace.

As I thought about it more, I began to think that one reason we look back on childhood with such fondness is the overwhelming simplicity of our lives at that stage.

Our parents’ care shielded us from the responsibility and reality awaiting us on the other side of adolescence. For a season, joy was less elusive. We could find satisfaction in diving boards, candy, and late-night sleepovers. Buckets of ice gave us hours of fun.

When the light at the end of our juvenile passage began to twinkle, however, our navigation through life became much more complicated. We faced the reality of responsibility, relationships, and maturity. Even when we emerged into the sunlit day of adulthood, the current of complication steadily worked to pull us further from the coast. (And it still does.)

That night I reminisced about the cardboard boxes and trampolines of my youth. Simple pleasures. And I thought about how most days at work I fight complexity for our clients in some way or another.

I thought about how I often forget that each person our clients communicates with battles complexity and desires more simplicity. How often we want to fill our messages to the brim with features, technology, connection, offers, advantages.

We would do well to remember Walt Whitman’s wise words:

“Simplicity is the glory of expression.”

In the next post, we’ll look at a few examples of simple communication.

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