Embracing Simplicity
Some years ago, I found myself on the tiny island of Mitsio, located around a three-hour boat ride from the coastline of Madagascar. Little more than a sandbank, the island had few resources and the people who lived there depended almost entirely on the ocean to meet their needs.
Small canoe-like vessels used for fishing were scattered all over the island's beaches. Each had a single stabiliser on one side, which a local fisherman explained were to keep the boats upright in the rough sea outside the reef. That made sense: the waves consistently came from one direction, and the stabiliser helped prevent them from tipping the canoe as the fishermen navigated the seas surrounding their island.
What I failed to comprehend, though, was what happened when they turned the boat around to return to shore. Surely the stabiliser would be on the wrong side of the canoe, causing it to become unstable? Confused and struggling with the language barrier, I asked the fisherman to take me out on his canoe to see it in action.
Sure enough, as we paddled away from the beach, the canoe performed flawlessly. With the waves lapping on just one side, the stabiliser countered the flow of the water, keeping the tiny boat nice and stable. So, I asked my new fisherman friend to head back to the beach, intrigued to see how he would manage with the stabiliser on the wrong side of the boat.
But, of course, he didn't turn the boat around. When asked to return to shore, he simply shrugged and turned himself around. So simple and yet so obvious! Until that point, it hadn't even occurred to me that it would be the people, not the vessel, who would reposition themselves for the return voyage. Not for the first time, I had been guilty of utterly overthinking a situation.
In the years following my encounter with that fisherman in Mitsio, I have often wondered if there is a lesson to be learned about embracing simplicity in our lives. He had tried to explain the beautiful simplicity of his canoe, but I failed to see what was right in front of my face. Ours is a complicated world, so much so that sometimes we see complication even where it doesn't exist. All of which leaves me to wonder: what other solutions can we find hiding in plain sight if we open our eyes to them?
