Keep It Simple

This from National Geographic, 1936

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Several years ago I began writing my first book. It was/is a study of happiness: who is, who isn't, and why and why not. I identified 10 "principles" that I believed were essential for a happy life, and I set about some serious research to prove me right. The most exciting challenge I had was transforming stuffy research into vibrantly readable & helpful information.
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I put the book aside when my agent and I could not agree on how to "package" it. She wanted each chapter to be light and simple: something like "10 Easy Steps to Happiness." I didn't want it to be so light and simple. I definitely did not want a sing-song-y-how-to. I will finish this book in my own way some day, and I still believe it will be welcomed with open arms. The reason I believe this is that it seems most of us actually aren't sure if we're happy or not.

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Anyway, my sister-in-law gave me a little book for my birthday, called The Architecture of Happiness, by Alain de Botton. On page 239 I found the following:

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"I once spent a summer in a small hotel in the second arrondissement in Paris, a stone's throw away from the chilly seriousness of the old Bibliotheque Nationale, where I repaired every morning in a vain attempt to research a book I hoped to write (but never did). It was a lively part of town, and when I was bored with my work, which was most of the time, I would often sit in a cafe adjacent to my hotel, named, as if out of a tourist guide, Chez Antoine. Antoine was dead, but his brother-in-law, Bertrand, had taken over the cafe and ran it with unusual conviviality and charisma. Everyone, it seemed, dropped by Chez Antoine at some point in the day. Elegant women would have coffee and a cigarette at the counter in the morning. Policemen lunched there, students whiled away the afternoons on the covered terrace, and by evening there'd be a mixture of scholars, politicians, prostitutes, divorcees and tourists, flirting, arguing, having dinner, smoking and playing pinball. As a result, although I was alone in Paris, and went for days hardly speaking to anyone, I felt none of the alienation with which I was familiar in other cities--in Los Angeles, for example, where I had lived for a few weeks in a block between freeways. That summer, like many people before and since, I imagined no greater happiness than to be able to live in Paris for ever, pursuing a routine of going to the library, ambling the streets and watching the world from a corner table at Chez Antoine."

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I read this and immediately thought of one of my Principles: Keep It Simple. I will travel much of the world, I expect, and my life is rich and deep with all the highs and lows of loving and laughing and succeeding and failing, but some times what I most want is a simple little place to go, to quietly belong there, to be reminded I am never alone.