Complicated, Part 1

“Why do you have to go and make things so complicated? I see the way you’re acting like you’re somebody else, gets me frustrated.” ~Avril Lavigne

I hear this song and I want to say, “Amen!” I want to scream it from the mountaintops like a yodeler from Switzerland because I get it. I get the whole deal about making life so complicated. When I was young I honestly thought life would be simple, that I would get what I wanted because I wanted it, that the sky was the limit, but that was before life actually happened.

I sit here approaching 40 and I think about why life is so complicated, and I’ve come up with two major reasons:

1. I made it this way. Yes, that’s right. If I had simply let things happen the way they were supposed to instead of trying to change the future everything would have been easy. Or if not easy then at least there would be excuses, reasons that I could live with. These complications come with the territory, with the fact that getting older means piling up decisions, some which are regrettable.
2. If life were easy what would I have to strive for? I subscribe to the idea that things go a certain way for a reason. Maybe it’s not destiny, or even divine plan, but it’s certainly an order to things in this world, and perhaps that order needs a sense of urgency to work as it must. Or maybe it’s just me who needs a sense of urgency, a sense that it could all come tumbling down at a moment’s notice, this facade, in order to focus at my best.

So then, why am I so frustrated because of these complications? Why do I feel like life should still be easy even though I’ve made so many of the very decisions that have brought about these very difficulties? And why is it so hard to move on and simply make the right decisions from here on out? I go to counseling, and I talk it out. I try to maintain a sense of normalcy, but they all haunt me, these complications.

I went to see a “job doctor” today. You know, the kind of people who help others think about the saleability of their skill sets, who tell them things they don’t think about for themselves. He helped me to see that there are possibilities out there, that even in this complicated world there are chances for change. But change means understanding the past, really digging deep and understanding myself. Why do I feel I need these complications, and how can I leave them behind?

Sam