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To Make or to Be Made
The thin line of choice we face every day between us and the world
“Life is really simple, but men insist on making it complicated.”
The quote above is from Confucius. I think about it from time to time — whenever my list of things to do seems to have swelled to larger than I can manage.
I also think about it when I catch myself doom-scrolling on Twitter, or falling down Wikipedia rabbit holes, or standing in front of the open pantry, mindlessly eating most of a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. I think about it as I sense things becoming too complicated for me.
I think about whether or not Confucius was right. Am I the problem? Or is life — is the world just really complicated?
Things Bumping Into Each Other
What goes on in the world is just the endless cascade of things bumping into each other in different ways. And then there’s we humans. We are part of the bumping, but we also have these things called desires.
We don’t simply observe the things bumping into each other. We see them, but then we form desires about them. We wish that they bump together in certain ways. We form strategies and make plans to get those things bumping into each other in just the ways we like — but not the ways we don’t.
