The Simplicity of Life

Poem Day 16

The Simplicity of Life

Some people make life way too challenging,
too overwhelming, too large for one
to even comprehend any of it.

Or maybe it’s the internet,
the magazines, the photoshoots,
the blogs, the incessant whining of commentators
of day-time cable or news channels and podcasts
that shout out the horrendous stories and news
that have ostensibly happened to this person
or that person or Instagram posts
that seem so glamorous and far-fetched simultaneously.

Photoshop has added this and that,
a pinch of more highliner and rosy skin,
thinned out some bumps and excess
of whatever might be deemed as excessive,
even added a tone or two, made gray
and wrinkles disappear at a mere click of the thumb,
created an image or smoothness
that truly doesn’t reflect anything
or anyone in real life but creating
a fictitious image of what could be if….

So many apps surreptitiously meld
the lines of reality and fiction,
fake and truth to the point of what is really real?

Whatever happened to the simplicity of life
without all of the distractions, distortions, and disturbances?
Have we come as far as to dim the truth
by telling tell a tall tale, fashioning a hyperbole
or even hyping nothing but air and nonsense
to capture more “likes” than anyone else?

Perhaps, we should bag the many lenses
of extravagance to a single lens of reality
and a sense of wholeness and goodness,
not caked with the layers of density and excess.

Perhaps, the simplicity of life is exactly that:
simplicity of doing and seeing,
no tiers of who’s who or what’s what
but mere deposits of good-old fashion
of what is still real and true and moral.