Complex versus Complicated

One of the practices I have been given that yields the most joy is the practice of exchanging complicated for complex.

Relationships are a great place to see this at work. I’d like to hope everyone has been in a position to watch themselves or someone else get into a relationship that was unhealthy. At the beginning of the relationship, no matter how many times they’ve dated the same type of person, they’re sure that this time it will work.

The pattern repeats itself, and they end up miserable. After a refractory period, they’re at it again, seemingly completely unaware of a pattern that is obvious to others (and frequently unwilling to listen to advice on that topic.) It’s not entirely something they’re choosing: after all, they don’t recognize the pattern. But if you talk to them, you’ll hear some common dynamics at work.

“Oh no, I can’t tell him/her that! They’re better off not knowing.”

“Oh, I couldn’t talk to him/her about that! They’d be really upset.”

“I have to protect them from that feeling/idea/knowledge.”

Whether or not they’re hiding things from the other person is actually less important here than the choice they’ve made to evaluate the other person’s weaknesses, judge the other person as less capable of dealing with the situation, and insert themselves into it as a protector for the other person.

One of the most common ways people make their lives complicated, not complex, is by insisting on judging everyone around them and inserting themselves into situations to manage someone else’s experience. They’re doing it to manage the other’s person’s experience of them, not just the world around them both.

Complicated is making yourself work by trying to maintain your world at the level of misery you desire. It’s quite literally impossible to maintain or manage your world so that you don’t have to feel worse, but you can spend your whole life tiring yourself out for it (and failing, and feeling more miserable.)

Complex is simply being who you are, which is not necessarily consistent—refusing to manage or maintain your world at the level of misery you desire, and refusing to make yourself be something you aren’t.

I may not tell you everything about myself all the time, but I’m not interested in setting myself up to manage my level of misery.

I’m not interested in being miserable at all.