Simplicomplicacity

I may be the worst person to read a murder mystery novel, I am quite content to let the narrative transport me rather than actively engage. This can be particularly frustrating at a murder mystery party as I suspect no one and my apathetic side muffles my competitive side. I read murder mystery novels in quite a laissez-faire fashion, truth be told many characters merge for me (which may explain why I never know quite who to suspect) If a television adaptation is too long, I may get confused as to who was who in the first place and realise I should just stick to what I know. I could never really work out the ghoul in Scooby Doo either, even if they were the only other secondary character apart from the ‘pesky kids’ and Scooby himself.

I loved that my Grandad always said if he arrived at a hotel and Jessica Fletcher from ‘Murder she wrote’ checked in at the same time, he’d turn around, get back in the car and drive to another hotel. I mean why would you risk it? Poor lady, everywhere she goes, there is a murder (maybe she orchestrated it, I mean she needed something to write, the woman had deadlines, didn’t she? just a thought). I digress.

So basically things need to be far simpler for me, think I’ll stick to reading ‘Peter and Jane go to the shops’. I think the type of people who read murder mysteries, crave the complexity of those books. Can we not make things complicated enough on our own?

I wonder, like the ghouls in Scooby Doo, are the answers to our problems hidden in plain sight?

The world has helped us to make everything simpler, we don’t have to use gears we have automatic cars, need food cooking quickly? There are microwaves. You don’t need to put a record on or a tape in or even a CD on anymore because, thanks to a man called Ian, we have the ‘ipod’. We have drive-through restaurants; in America you can go to a drive-through ATM for Pete’s sake, sometimes you don’t have to leave your car for anything. This is a world where we have machines that can exercise for us. Want to diet? You can get a diet plan and a shopping list printed for you, lest you have to utilise your poor little hand to write ‘a packet of Ryvita and a pot of cottage cheese’. Want to find love? you need never leave the house. We call for pizza or a chinese meal and it's delivered to the door. We can order books, films and clothes off the Internet. Hate fighting miserable kerfuffling people at Christmas time? That’s what the magic wonderful wonder web is for. The world has used all its power to make things simpler for us, so why are we still complicating every-little-thing?

When I have a problem my mind seems to clog up, if I could visualise it I think it would look similar to spaghetti with thick sauce. Confiding it to a friend and asking for advice seems to untangle it slightly; their 20/20-blurfree-problem-vision versus my complete-problem-induced-cataracts seems to start the unravelling process.

Why is it, then, that when we look at someone else’s problem the answer seems to slap us in the face? What I propose is that when I have a problem, someone should present my problem to me, as their own, and when I have offered a solution they should then say “you know what? (Slaps their head) Silly me, that wasn’t my problem atall, that was yours!” Problemo solved!

I also think the biggest boulder that prevents us from solving our own problems is us, we place soooo many obstacles in the way, when someone offers a solution how many of us say, “I can’t because…” how many of those obstacles are our perceptions? How many of those roadblocks do we place in the way? Hmmm?

Believe me I am not talking about this as if I haven’t got any problems of my own, it has taken a few years to realise that we put some of those obstacles in the way ourselves. If the solution seems simple sometimes we think… hmmm that is way too easy, there must be a more complicated way, surely. While scratching our heads we decide (holds hand triumphantly in air and envisages a large audience for this speech) "Come hell or high water, even if it takes my whole life, all my energy, a large team of volunteers, a well publicised facebook group, a charity organisation, heck, if I have to dedicate my entire being to it I will, yes will, make it my mission to make this way more complicated than is humanly necessary." (A loud cheer erupts in the auditorium)

Why make it more difficult for yourself? I am not asking you to evaluate your entire life and pick the easiest answer, crap job? Leave. Unhappy marriage? Divorce. Those are not the simple answers. What I am asking is that you don’t make it more complicated for yourself; see if any of those roadblocks are your own reinforced slabs of concrete.

I am certainly no psychologist, nor am I presuming all problems are simple. I am suggesting if they are not deeply ethical or world changing stop minding the ‘what ifs’ and seek the simpler route. If you have good friends you can trust, talk about it. Or go with the impartial route, if my friend came to me with the same problem what would I advise? We don’t need to make it more complicated than it is. I have spent years studying subjects where as an audience or reader we were made to search for sub-texts and hidden things, we had to look for symbolism and some suggestions, I fear, were pulled off the home page of tenuouslinks.com. My friend had an English teacher who said that the reason the lady was called ‘Mrs Haversham’ in Great Expectations was a play on ‘have a sham’ ummm… think you are searching much deeper than the author anticipated there, love. I once had to endure a Science Fiction class one semester at university (in my defence it was the best of a bad bunch). In it, the *ahem*, geeks, debated an entire lesson on the intricacies and subtext of ‘Bladerunner’ that’s right, I said ‘Bladerunner’ (kill me, kill me now) some of their theories were extremely questionable and well, let's face it, a little over my head. I do, however, remember wondering (whilst fighting my boredom induced coma) if that was indeed the author and filmmaker’s original convoluted intention.

When you are young your parents break everything down, take it step by step, word by word, they don’t present you with ‘War and Peace’ as your first book, no we have ‘At the Zoo’ and ‘The very hungry caterpillar’ (still bedside favourites of mine) Why make it complicated and difficult?
Granted, “well then you can’t come to my birthday party” isn’t an acceptable solution to friendship differences, and “I’m on their side, not yours” won’t hold much sway in a peace negotiation.
But do we really need to look for more complexity and make matters harder all the time? Why yes, I think we feel we need to. Sometimes I want to look at the world through a child’s eyes, appreciate things for what they are, accept some of the things I am told, question things yes and yearn to know more, but not get ahead of myself and not make things harder than they already are.

For some things a back-to-basics approach would be the more desirable route, that and a simple answer to a simple problem.