Category Archives: gray

On the beach

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Over the recent spring break, I went to the beach. The weather was cold and windy, and the afternoon I went down to the beach, I only had to share the view of the Gulf with a bunch of windswept seagulls who didn’t seem overjoyed with life at that moment. The wind blew steadily across the sand, and I could feel tiny grains of it on my face like little needles. My mouth felt gritty and dry. Whitecaps dotted the ocean just off the beach and surf was at times over five feet high. Only a few oddballs like me were keeping the seagulls company. The sky was a leaden gray color, if you call that a color–more of an anti-color if anything. The air was moist, and either there was some spray in the air or there was a little mist falling from that dull sky. Two guys sold firewood from the back of a metal container, but they were as solitary as I was. Random fishermen stood tending their lines, turning their faces from the wind. I looked at my tracks in the sand as if I were the last person on earth. On a day when the beach should have been full of spring breakers, sun, warmth, and sand, it was a lonely, cold place with only the usual suspects–fisherman and seagulls. I felt like a solitary shipwreck survivor who has not only lost his ship, but his way in life as well. The wind blew, a seagull complained, a jeep with some errant young people went buy without making a sound. I left to go look for something to quench my thirst.

On simplicity

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I’ve always said that complexity always leads to failure. Simplicity, however, is not, conversely or paradoxically a simple idea. More complex plans have landed on the rocks because simplicity was eschewed because a simple plan was never considered. The options you give people, the more mistakes they can make, the more loose ends they can leave dangling, the more bad decisions they can dive into. Many people are guilty of bad planning because they never understood the simplicity of their situation in the first place. Not that life is black and white, but gray is utterly simple. People often get hung up on issues of right or wrong when they never understood the problem in the first place. Simplicity is often as simple as never offering an opinion in the first place, as simple as walking away and leaving good enough alone, as simple as letting things be. I’m not talking about Natural Law, or inalienable rights, or the pursuit of happiness, but I am loosely speaking of tolerance, but tolerance that is simple, uncodified, and transparent. Simplicity is an act of seeing clearly, of moving away the detritus, dusting away the ashes, and removing that which is blocking understanding. We often complain blindly about things we don’t know about, things we can’t understand, or things we cannot change, banging our collective heads against the wall in expression of insanity that is trying to elicit a different outcome from the same set of parameters. Simplicity avoids these kind of simulacra and conundrums and accepts the world as it is, not how we want it to be. Does that mean we will disagree at times with what we see and experience? Of course it does, but simplicity also dictates that that is irrelevant–the world will always be filled with those things with which we disagree, with which we take offense, but simplicity also dictates that we avoid dying on those hills because most of those kinds of fights are always lost. Is the world filled with injustice? Yes, and we should always voice our objections to injustice, but simplicity will often whisper in our ears that there is a vast chasm between that which is unjust and that which just is.

On simplicity

Posted on by

I’ve always said that complexity always leads to failure. Simplicity, however, is not, conversely or paradoxically a simple idea. More complex plans have landed on the rocks because simplicity was eschewed because a simple plan was never considered. The options you give people, the more mistakes they can make, the more loose ends they can leave dangling, the more bad decisions they can dive into. Many people are guilty of bad planning because they never understood the simplicity of their situation in the first place. Not that life is black and white, but gray is utterly simple. People often get hung up on issues of right or wrong when they never understood the problem in the first place. Simplicity is often as simple as never offering an opinion in the first place, as simple as walking away and leaving good enough alone, as simple as letting things be. I’m not talking about Natural Law, or inalienable rights, or the pursuit of happiness, but I am loosely speaking of tolerance, but tolerance that is simple, uncodified, and transparent. Simplicity is an act of seeing clearly, of moving away the detritus, dusting away the ashes, and removing that which is blocking understanding. We often complain blindly about things we don’t know about, things we can’t understand, or things we cannot change, banging our collective heads against the wall in expression of insanity that is trying to elicit a different outcome from the same set of parameters. Simplicity avoids these kind of simulacra and conundrums and accepts the world as it is, not how we want it to be. Does that mean we will disagree at times with what we see and experience? Of course it does, but simplicity also dictates that that is irrelevant–the world will always be filled with those things with which we disagree, with which we take offense, but simplicity also dictates that we avoid dying on those hills because most of those kinds of fights are always lost. Is the world filled with injustice? Yes, and we should always voice our objections to injustice, but simplicity will often whisper in our ears that there is a vast chasm between that which is unjust and that which just is.