Readers of The Honest Apothecary Re-Imagined are coming to learn that this blog has now become the home for short articles and thoughts on a wide variety of topics, well beyond the walls of the pharmacy. I still love medicine. But I needed a home for all the things I care deeply about. In that way, as I have somewhat joking said, the Honest Apothecary is back, and now “more honest than ever.”
Part of the reason for expanding the topics covered on this blog is to meet new friends, make new contacts, and connect with others whose interests may overlap with my own, whether or not they are in healthcare. As such, this blog will have stories and posts about food, fitness, faith, and other non-pharmaceutical subjects which are a part of who I am. Friendships often begin, as C.S. Lewis once said, when someone says “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.”
Today’s post is an example. This morning I was reading a touching story about a missionary working in an area of the world where hope and faith are uncommon, even illegal. He is a brave and kind man. In a recent newsletter (which must come password protected to help ensure the safety of those sharing) he told us of how he was able to explain the Biblical worldview to a small child by simply showing her 5 colorful slips of paper, and then briefly connecting a Bible-truth to each one. Below are the colors and a 1-sentence summary of the story.
WHITE: The world was good as God made it.
BLACK: Man sinned and brought death and sadness into the world that God created.
RED: God’s plan to save the world was by the death of his son Jesus on the cross, to pay for our sins.
GREEN: Repent and believe and you will have a new life.
GOLD: Beyond this life there is a permanent home in heaven for all who have believed.
SIMPLE IS BEST
Now that I’m in the sixth decade of my life, I am coming to appreciate the importance of keeping things simple whenever possible. Five colors are simple. That’s okay. Simple is always the best place to begin. That doesn’t mean that we never dive deeper into a topic. But it does mean that our ability to explain something simply tells a lot about our own grasp of the subject. Listen to what these individuals have said on the subject of simplicity:
Albert Einstein said “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
Leonardo da Vinci said “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Richard Feynman said “You can always recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity.”
Henry David Thoreau said, “Our life is frittered away by detail… Simplify, simplify.”
Ironically, some have pointed out, tongue in cheek, that Thoreau could have just said simplify once.
The KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid) is a good rule of thumb for many areas of our life. For example, those of us in management and leadership positions have to be especially mindful of this. It is easy to unintentionally be taking over people’s heads on a topic. I have personally sat through many meetings in which a vendor is trying to explain their product, and they fail miserably, simply because they could not keep it simple enough. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPod in 2001 he described the product this way, saying “it’s 1,000 songs in your pocket.” It was a phenomenal success.
What Can You Simplify?
Is there an important part of your life could benefit from a simpler story? What do you and I need to distill a bit more? Is it our morning routine? Our mission statement for work or life? Our workout program? Part of what led me to pick up my blogging passion again was the realization that I could, and should, simplify my adventure and just write in one place. There are numerous benefits that flow from putting things in their simplest form. Get to the details down the road. We build big homes on very simple looking foundations.
If 5 colors can be used to explain the whole history of the world, all that has gone wrong, and all that has been done to make it right again, surely we can simplify a few more things as well.
White, Black, Red, Green, Gold.
I bet you remember the story, don’t you?
