I know several people who end long winding arguments with the term “It’s complicated” and expect that to be final word on an issue. There was a time when I used to think if there’s an issue there would also be a solution and it can be found, may be by taking a detached look. It’s actually very easy to take a detached look because one since you are detached so you don’t have to feel what someone is going through and two, since you are just a spectator so you don’t have to live, what he or she is. You just need to sit in judgment and pass a verdict or read a solution, “Do A , don’t do B, try doing C, don’t think of D, believe in E, forget G and so on…” It sounds good, seem easy and you go back thinking you hit the nail in the head. That’s how easy it is to take a detached look. But if solutions were that easy, smartest and best people I know wouldn’t have ended their arguments by saying “It’s complicated”.

I am not belittling an unbiased and unprejudiced advice. So often when you can’t see things clearly, it really helps. But problem is when our good hearted, well meaning unbiased and unprejudiced advisor fail to see things clearly. Facts are just like bones, when you put them together they give you a very good idea of what a man would have been like, but without the flesh you can never say who exactly that man is. And so often when people, just have facts with no knowledge of feelings, it’s like recognizing a person based on his skeleton, unless you are a specialist you would fail and that’s what happens to most of us.

But this realization usually comes, when you come under the lens rather than being a detached observer. It’s only when you are involved and living it that you realize that sometimes things are indeed difficult, there are no straightforward solutions and no one can tell you what to do because no one knows ‘why’ you didn’t do what seemed to them the obvious course of action.

You didn’t do it because it was not that simple, “It’s complicated”.