If you read my column last week you know I was harping on and on about the need for more simplicity and quiet places and peace — all that glorious stuff that has become so scarce during this amazing 20th century.

Well, I'm still there this week. And I'm not alone. In fact, I've been commiserating with friends about the fact that we have far too many choices.

I know. You want to remind me of how many times I've talked about how precious our choices are, and how healthy it is to remember that we always have choices.

I still feel that way. But there are extremes.

For instance, yesterday I spent ten minutes standing in front of four shelves of tomatoes at Kroger. The canned tomato space was probably more than six feet wide. Three times I scanned the shelves for tomato sauce. I saw crushed, diced, whole, Mexican, Italian, and many brands of all of the above, but no sauce. Finally, I turned to a gentleman standing beside me, who also had been scanning the shelves forever, and said, “I don't know what you are looking for, but if you happen to see the tomato sauce, please point it out to me.”

“That's what I'm looking for, too. It's not here,” he said. “I've scanned the shelves three times.”

Three was the magic number before giving up, I suppose. We went on our way without any plain old tomato sauce.

A few minutes later, a little boy came running towards me, “Hey, lady, we found it. We found the tomato sauce!”

It was in the spaghetti sauce area among more brands of prepared spaghetti sauce than I dared to count.

A few weeks ago I was looking for coffee filters at Ingles. I looked and looked and counted 18 different strange brands/designs before my eye roved over to the right beyond the countless bags/brands of coffee where I finally spotted plain old Mr. Coffee filters. Actually, I think I bought the Ingles brand which was beside Mr. Coffee. I only recall with certainty that I was quite frustrated before I finally found what I was looking for.

How much time do we waste each day “enjoying” all our choices?

I recall, as a child hearing my dad, who was then the same age I am now, speak of the good old days when things were simpler, slower, easier...

I wondered at his musings and thought he just needed to learn to appreciate more things. Now it is I who longs to appreciate less.

I, however, am not alone. The youth of today may be wiser than I was. They too voice frustration over the busyness, the waste, the perplexities of today's world. I do think simplicity may be on its way back “in.”

Perhaps, with a strange twist, the complexity of the computer age and the Internet may help us learn how to claim the simplicity and order we are all beginning to crave?

Don't you just love it when your computer crashes? Freezes up. Turns one font into another. Letters to numbers...

A computer will do all sorts of irritating things when we overload it. When we try to open too much stuff at one time. When we insist that it think about too many things at once.

Get the picture? ...And we wonder what causes Alzheimers and other memory impairment problems.

Ah, yes, my mind and heart longs for quieter, simpler times. Will my yearnings lead me in the right direction/s? Indeed, choices, choices and more choices.

I recall with trepidation the words of the prophet Isaiah: “For thus the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, has said, `In repentance and rest you shall be saved, in quietness and trust is your strength.' But you were unwilling.”

Are you swallowing as hard as I am? Do you want to file your thoughts away for a later time when you are less flustered? Would you prefer to consider ways to simplify your life after you have worked though at least a few of the problems/duites that call today? Are you too busy to think about subjects like repentance and rest?

Then you and I are too busy.

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