Complicated

On the fictional TV series, "Chicago Hope," one of the main characters was killed, but returned a few episodes later to visit a good friend. The friend, knowing he was dead, found this visit to be somewhat troubling, and peppered him with questions about the nature of life and death, the afterlife, the universe, and other great mysteries. To most of his questions, the dead friend would answer, "It's complicated." Predictably, the still-living friend found this answer to be unsatisfying. (Note: I was not a huge fan of "Chicago Hope," and perhaps my memory of this episode is somewhat vague ... but it was, after all, a fictional TV show.)

Often, the most honest answer to a question is, "It's complicated." Yet we are trained, or perhaps born, to dislike and distrust this answer. We demand "straight answers," and accuse people of "being evasive" if they attempt to offer the truth rather than give a brief, but inaccurate, reply. Like it or not, we live complicated lives in a complicated world, or at least SOME of us live complicated lives. Perhaps a key problem is our tendency to impose our own standards on other people. Things that may seem straightforward in our lives my be complicated in another person's life.

The entire universe is complicated. Many things are simultaneously complicated and simple, which, in the end, is perhaps the ultimate complication. This is not necessarily what people want to hear. People have a tendency to want to know right and wrong, true and false. "Just the facts." In a conflict, we want to know which side is right and which side is wrong. We want to know why things happened the way they did, and we want a brief, simple explanation of why things happened the way they did. Sometimes, a brief, simple explanation is accurate enough, but other times there is no way to be both accurate and brief. It's complicated.

To say something is complicated is not to say that there is no explanation, or that there are no answers, or that there is no truth. It means merely that the explanation or answers or truth may be difficult (or even impossible) to discern, state, or fathom. Comprehension might take a few minutes effort, or more than a single lifetime. For someone expecting or demanding a "Yes" or "No", even an explanation lasting a full minute might be more than they are willing to try to understand.

One of the problems with living in "the information age" is that with easy access to so much information, it is easy to consider yourself an "expert" on many complicated topics. Often only the true experts realize just how little they know about the topic, or just how complicated it truly is.

So how do we function in a complicated world where we will never know all the answers? Appropriately, the answer is complicated. As humans, we can probably never fully understand anything. To function, and to keep our sanity, we rely on generalizations, simplifications, and assumptions. We also intuitively realize that total understanding is unnecessary. For example, we need not understand gravity in order to enjoy its effects, or carry on our daily lives.

Still, we should remember that the underlying truth behind the simplifications is often complicated. When we seek to label things such as emotions or relationships, for instance, the truth is almost always complicated, and words such as "love" or "lover" are simply the tip of complicated icebergs. While we have a need to try and view the world in simple terms we can cope with, these simple terms may give only vague approximations of truth.

A key point to remember is that different things are complicated for different people, and when someone tells you something is complicated, you probably are in no position to insist that it is simple. Basic questions like, "What do you do for a living?" or "How many pets do you have?" may seem straightforward enough, but for some people the only honest answer is "It's complicated." And if you disagree with me on this, I have an obvious response:

It's complicated.