Simple Joys

“We are nowhere forbidden to laugh, or be satisfied with food…
or to delighted with music, or to drink wine.”
– John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion

I don’t know about you but sometimes I lose sight of the simple joys God has given – food, drink, music, conversation. Sometimes they are concealed by techno-explosion that is my life. IPods, laptops, television, DVD, gizmos ad infinitum seem to crowd out the stuff I used to do before Bill Gates, Steve Jobs & Co. turned the world on its ear.

Yesterday (while staring at a computer) I called my wife (on my cell) and asked her if she would like to completely change plans for the evening (which for me was sitting at home watching TV or probing the deep recesses of the internet) and go out for dinner, just the two of us. Within a few hours we had finished dinner and were sitting down at the Kemah Boardwalk, eating overpriced but extremely tasty Marble Slab ice cream, conversing about the going’s-on of each of our lives and watching kids happily scurrying through the water spouts anxious to be the latest victim of an unannounced burst of water. All of this on a summer evening whose clear blue sky was dotted with clouds of amber, gold and crimson as the sun was bidding its farewell for the day.

Simple joys.

Even though relatively inexpensive, they seem to fill me up more often than the “shiny, digital, on/off button” stuff I let crowd my life. Maybe I need to take a step back. Maybe I should push away from the tech-table for a while. Maybe I’d be better if I picked up the phone and called a buddy or two for a drink, a bite and meaningful conversation. So I’ll try to reduce the strain on my eyes and my energy bill as I turn the shiny things off a little bit more than usual in order to carve out additional time for the simple joys.