I Choose Complicated

Our life is frittered away by detail… Simplify, simplify, simplify!
–Henry David Thoreau, Walden

I find this month’s theme very, very complicated.

Because life is so complicated.

I could talk about relationships. But who hasn’t?

I could talk about work. But who wants to read about that?

I could talk about the plot of LOST. But I would probably only amuse myself.

(Although, seriously? WHAT is UP with this whole Not John Locke thing?)

(And the flash sideways?? I can’t WAIT to see where that’s going.)

(Okay, I’m done now.)

And then, of course, there’s technology. Progress. All those little things that are supposed to make our lives so much easier, to save us time, to help us multi-task so that we’re freed up to do all the things on our Bucket Lists or our 101 in 1001 Lists or any other lists we’ve compiled of things we’ll do some day when we have more time.

(Skydiving, anyone? No? Alrighty then…)

I could turn this post into a rant about following the advice of Thoreau, to simplify our lives and expel all those things that hold us down. Long commutes to work, credit card balances higher than the value of our cars, and living through a series of undefined relationships.

I could wonder why we do this to ourselves; make everything so complicated, create drama out of the smallest details, fill our lives with work and responsibilities and tasks and chores until we are so busy we wouldn’t remember to breathe if we didn’t write it down.

But what’s the point of that?

I mean, it’s not like someone out there in cyberland is going to read this one post and suddenly think, “Wow! She’s right! I’m going to sell my house in the suburbs and move to the woods to live off the land.”

Really, who wants to do that anyway?

Well, besides maybe the Yanomamo of South America.

(I studied them in a college Anthropology class, though, and even they have drama in their villages.)

No, I think there’s really no way to avoid all the complications of life. We can switch to online bill paying and cook all our meals on George Foreman grills and even get college degrees over the internet. It’s just that easy.

But life is still going to be complicated.

Because life is full of people.

People that are full of desires and dreams and emotions. We have little people running around underfoot demanding our attention and our time. We have friends calling and texting and facebooking and tweeting and vying for our attention and time because they have to fill us in on every detail of what’s happening with them, since, for reasons unknown, we’ve turned into this society of oversharers, hiding behind our computer screens and telling the world all the things we are and are not up to.

(I know it’s against the rules to write about ourselves in this month’s post, but…yeah, I really do mean “we.”)

Nah, instead of preaching about simplicity, I say we embrace the complicated. Because life’s so much more fun that way.

Thoreau was right, but he was also wrong. Our life IS frittered away by detail. But it’s in the details that we really get to live.

Or, at least, to have stuff to talk about.

Filed under: "It's Complicated" by Karen
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