If You’re Easy To Please, You’ll Be Pleased More Often

“You’re easy to please” should be a compliment. That’s what I think, even though I know it isn’t used that way. I know the people saying it usually mean that you’re undiscerning, childish, and too quick to give approval where it isn’t warranted. What I want to know is: What are you supposed to be waiting for, before you let yourself be pleased?

If you’re waiting for things to be perfect in every way, forget it. You’ll be miserable your whole life. If you’re waiting for things to be practically perfect in every way, then you’d better hope you’re Mary Poppins. Let’s face it: The world we’re living in needs more than just a spoonful of sugar. Our planet has some really great things and wonderful people on it, but it’s no secret that they are all flawed. As am I. As are you. Even God’s beautiful creation around us is marred by sin with sickness and death. Can we really be easily pleased in a place like this?

Yes, we can. And as for myself, I’d certainly like to be. I’d like to be as easily pleased as a child picking wildflowers out of the grass as a gift for his mother. I’d like to be as easily pleased as his mother, putting her ragged gift in a vase, giving it a drink, admiring it. I’d like to be as easily pleased as that about every bit of good I see, everywhere, and in everyone. Why shouldn’t I be? Because things are still bad? But being pleased about the good things around me doesn’t mean for a moment that I have to ignore the bad ones. It doesn’t stop me from seeing where more good is desperately needed, and working hard for it—all it does is help me appreciate and enjoy the good that is already there. These two things can actually go quite well together. Even God, as George MacDonald said, “is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.”

We should never be satisfied with the status quo of this sin-cursed world, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be easy to please. After all, if we refuse to be pleased now with the good we already have, how much more will it take? What are we waiting for? I’d rather be easily pleased, now. I’d rather celebrate the imperfect good around me whenever it catches and reflects a ray of glory. I’d rather be happy whenever faltering people take faltering steps in the right direction. That way, at the very least, I’ll get to be pleased more often.