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If you look around, you can see a lot of needless complexity. Not just in the blogosphere, or in the various other media. We seem to think these days that if it is good, then it needs to be complicated. For an example: Check out the games today. I like an involving game as much as the next person. Yet, as the games got more complicated, they lost some of their appeal. Nintendo decided to deliberately shift their focus to fun, approachable, easily playable games and they’re skyrocketing in popularity.
The same can be said of our inner world. Quite often, when we are looking for new techniques to use, we will subconsciously be looking for ones that are complicated as opposed to ones that are simple. The reasoning is easy enough: You start out simple, then move on to more complicated. While that does make some sense, it leaves something out: Elegance.
Elegance, not simplicity.
Elegance is defined as:
A quality of neatness and ingenious simplicity in the solution of a problem (especially in science or mathematics); “the simplicity and elegance of his invention”
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
This is what we want. Simplicity is useful, but we really want elegance. Why? Let’s go back to system requirements for a bit.
When you put a program on a computer, you have to think about how well the program is written. Does it take up half of your hard drive? Does it grab all the RAM in your computer and keep bloating up until your computer restarts itself? Can you pick it up and use it or do you have to be an expert right away? And I’m not just talking about operating systems here 
The point is that if a program is well designed, it will be elegant. The program will be no larger than it needs to be, will take just the RAM it needs, and will be well designed for the user to make use of it. The Instant Boss is an excellent example. Small, easy to use, and gets the job done. We want the same thing for the techniques we use in our day-to-day lives. Suppose you had a technique for getting back into balance that had seventeen steps, and one that had three. If they are equal in effectiveness, I’d rather have the three-step. If the three-step is more effective, then we can forget the other one.
On the other hand, we don’t want simplicity without function; it still has to work. If the technique doesn’t actually do anything then there’s no point. Imagine instead of the program I showed you above, there was just a window composed of a single button that said “go”. Clicking on that button does nothing. Simple, but not what we want.
The search for elegance.
Trying to find elegance is difficult at first, simply because there is so much out there. Generally, what you want to do is look for two signs: Usefulness and simplicity. If you find something simple, check to see if it is effective. If you find something that seems effective, look to see if it is simple. It can be difficult and tiring. However, the rewards can be astounding.
Do you have any elegant techniques that you’d like to share? Please leave them in the comments!
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***The November 2007 Challenge***
This is the badge for my two goals. There are two “points”: One for each piece of the challenge. (Living up to the “Blogging Promise” at right and maintaining a good, consistent meditation practice each and every day.) The challenge began 11-9-2007 and ends 12-9-2007. Comments, suggestions, and feedback welcome!
