Simple Life

In a modest stucco house tucked into a quiet Florida cul-de-sac, the late morning sun streamed through half-open blinds, casting long, warm strips of light across the floor. Ramon had only just risen—later than usual. At sixty-three, he had learned not to rush the day. He reached for his coffee, still warm in his thermos mug, and sat before his small meditation nook, the Bible app already open to Romans 12.

"Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice... Do not conform to the pattern of this world..." the verse read. The words echoed with clarity in his mind, and for once, he did not fight them.

This was not a new realization. Each day lately has been a small act of surrender, of letting go of the habits that had once defined his sense of productivity—and even, mistakenly, his sense of self-worth. But this morning felt different. There was joy, however subtle. Joy that came not from achievement, but from clarity. From release.

Ramon remembered how it all started, three years ago. What had begun as an innocent desire to share a few life updates with distant friends through Facebook had quickly spiraled into something far more consuming. At first, it was the thrill of rediscovery—of updating, of crafting video reels, editing soundtracks, pairing filters with sentiment. But soon, the habit took root. He began posting daily. Then, obsessively. Checking likes. Monitoring views. Browsing endlessly. Admiring others. Comparing. Envying.

Social media, he realized, had become a mirror—one that reflected not who he was, but who he thought others wanted him to be.

“It was no longer joy,” he whispered, his fingers tracing the worn cover of his prayer journal. “It was hunger. For attention. For affirmation. For something the screen could never really offer.”

The Holy Spirit, he believed, had been gently steering him back. The clearest sign came not in a sermon or a dream—but in illness that had rearranged everything—plans, priorities, and the illusion that he would one day return to his old hometown in the Philippines for good.

He remembered the trip home three years ago —forty-five days spent in a town that no longer recognized him, surrounded by faces that belonged to someone else’s memory. The streets were familiar, yes. The food was still comforting. But the connection? Gone. A third of his friends had passed. The rest were aging, burdened, and distant. He had wandered the house his parents once lived in, sitting by the lace-curtained window, watching the slow passage of tricycles and schoolchildren. He had never felt so alone. He never felt so alienated in a barrio he once called home.

That’s when the Holy Spirit whispered again: “Stay where you are in Florida. You are not done there. You cannot start all over again in your old town in the Philippines. Everything you thought was there is gone.”

Florida, for all its humidity and heat, offered safety. Emergency services. A hospital ten minutes away. Paved walking trails under sprawling banyans. Anonymity. Solitude. Familiarity. Life.

And so, he returned back and stayed.

This morning, Ramon had mailed his HOA checks for the rest of the year, a symbolic gesture of commitment to the place he now reluctantly called home. As he stepped out of the post office, sunlight poured through unexpected raindrops—a shimmer of grace falling from a blue sky. The breeze off the Intracoastal cut the summer heat, and he took it as an invitation: he walked. Four miles. Shade and breeze his companions. And in his ears, his latest audiobook—four chapters of Robert Jordan’s Lord of Chaos, interwoven with the whisper of leaves and the steady rhythm of his own breath.

The afternoon led him to General Dollar, not out of urgency, but for the simple pleasure of routine. Potato taters. Zero-sugar soda. Something to stock the pantry. Something to mark the day. He drove home feeling light.

But the temptation lingered. The lure of checking Facebook. The dopamine pulls of the red dot.

He resisted.

Instead, he opened his laptop and began writing — notes for a new article on his health blog, drafts for his fiction website, ideas swirling for a piece that might inspire someone down the line. Perhaps this very story, told under another name. Perhaps this moment.

He no longer felt the need to link everything to Facebook. His creative work had become sacred again, private even. The likes didn’t matter. The shares didn’t either. What mattered was clarity. Discipline. The rediscovery of his gifts: writing, storytelling, teaching.

Social media had taught him a painful truth: that much of the world now performed rather than lived. He too had performed, perhaps not with vanity, but with the quiet desperation of someone trying to matter in a world that was forgetting him.

But God had not forgotten him. The Spirit reminded him daily—through wind, through verse, through the very restraint it took not to open another tab.

There were things Ramon still missed: the spontaneous chats with old friends, the imagined life in his hometown, the brief flirtation with digital popularity. But more than these, he longed for something deeper—something lasting. Conversations with God. Insights from long-dead authors. Honest reflections rendered in prose, stored in a quiet website, unlinked from the noise.

At dusk, Ramon sat again by his window, the same kind of window he had once stared through back home. But this one looked out onto a Florida street, quiet and still, the breeze just beginning to shift as another thunderstorm prepared to arrive.

He pulled out his notebook and began to write:

“Offer your life not for applause, but for purpose. Offer your time not for praise, but for presence. Offer your gifts not for trend, but for truth.”

He paused.

This was worship.
This was joy.
This was enough.
2025-07-17 00:00:56
shortstories