Stop Solving and Start Living.

Why complexity gives us meaning.

Arthur Brooks points that the way for us to live a full life is by embracing problems between complicated and complex. The first one comes to clarity, the second separates you from it.

A complicated problem is that which is very hard to solve, Brooks says, but once you solve it, it’s static and you can do it again and again and again. Think about a math problem, the making of a table, accounting, a jet engine. These are how and what problems, solvable and finite.

A complex problem, on the other hand, could be super easy to understand but impossible to solve. “They’re not solvable, but livable,” says Brooks. Think relationships, marriage, happiness, spirituality. There are too many unknowns in them. They evolve. For example, you understand what is to love and to be loved, but you will never really solve it. They are passed from parents to offspring. The long run is what they’re here for.

A complicated problem gives you learning. A complex problem gives you meaning. When you use the tools of the first to solve the second, you lose a sense of reality and therefore your meaning.

“I really do feel like I’m not living a real life,” says one of Brooks students to interviews he has been making for a recent book he wrote. “Are you fully alive when you get up and the first thing you do is you pick up your phone, which is by the side of your bed, and check in with a universe that’s being mediated through the small screen,” says Brooks, “and then you do your work on Zoom, and then your friends are on social media, and your dating is on the app, and your progress is made through your score on your gaming, and your relationships are stripped of their humanity because you’re looking at pornography?”

We are spending a historic amount of time alone. Our homes are so much more comfortable than they used to be. We want to go out less and share less. We celebrate when friends cancel plans. We can’t get enough from the greatest and most individual devices: our phones, our headphones, our TVs. It takes us 99.9% less time to open our phones and like an Instagram post than to call someone to celebrate them. We don’t say hi to strangers anymore, real conversations last just more than a few words.

We are getting used to diminishing life’s greatest complexities. When we see the whole world as a math problem, we bring our inevitable desire to find a variable, equate it to something else. We rush things without a clear understanding of what they mean. It’s not finding knowledge that we care about, but wisdom to face the challenges. And you can’t find wisdom without complexity. How do you grow without a real sense of curiosity?

How do you learn to listen to someone else without your well-trained short attention?

How do you appreciate your surroundings if you don’t have time to dream and to wonder?

How do you learn to love and to be loved?

Joseph Campbell said that people are not looking for the meaning of life, they are looking for the feeling of being alive. And if you’re not fully alive, the reason for that is because you’re living a simulated life.

Instead, look for the opposite and disconnect. Get bored. Be uncomfortable. It doesn’t mean spending an hour without your phone. It means stopping and asking yourself, “who do I want to be and what do I want to know?” The more we chase these sorts of questions, the more complex it gets, the more we discover ourselves.

Find uncertainty. Choose the thing that makes you nervous. Go when you’re not ready.

I started this year saying more yes to social plans around me, complex scenarios, no matter the extra budget, against my own will. To be more social, even in the most random opportunities, even when I don’t feel like it.

Am I ready for these? I say to myself. Do I have a repertoire of pop-culture knowledge to talk about? What was the last thing I read that I can share? Where am I in my life? I don’t know. I don’t know any of these things—I just go.

I started to have fun with people playing new board or human-sized games for the first time. I’ve been in awkward conversations and found silence to be a great way to also say something.

One day I said yes to a hike with friends in Britain’s countryside, a place that I didn’t feel physically prepared for. We saw the beauty of the green, and felt the freshness of the air. We crossed farms and saw wonderful animals like sheep and horses. We went and sneaked through isolated and quaint neighbourhoods. We saw people pass by, and everyone said hi. Dogs ran across and surrounded us, then dutifully went back to their owners. We got entangled in wild puddles of water, we sank our feet, we were careful to not fall on them. We crossed bridges and took turns on those that were closed. We went through small alleyways to find ways through.

That day was supposed to rain, and there wasn’t a single drop; we actually had Sun and wind, a beautiful January winter, Britain calling. At the end my legs ached from exhaustion. But we survived. I felt alive.

It reminds me of the Jim Carrey movie Yes, Man. Where, at some point towards the climax, the girl reminds him that “the world’s a playground. You know that when you are a kid, but somewhere along the way everyone forgets it.” The difference is in how you face your next challenge.

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Sources

[1] The Tim Ferriss Show w/ Arthur Brooks - Episode 841
[2] The Gray Area with Sean Illing w/Derek Thompson - The cost of spending time alone
[3] The Lyon’s Tracker to Life - Boyd Varty