Why The Simple Things Matter
Nothing starts off complicated
Have you ever tried playing a Rubik’s cube casually?
Let’s say we start with a mint, just out from the box, Rubik’s cube and all of its color is perfectly aligned, Red Green Blue, everything.
One small step, we start turning the cube once. Then twice. Then Thrice.
After turning the cube mindlessly for fifteen time, we try to solve the puzzle.
We start turning, and turning, and turning, and turning.
And then suddenly, we start asking ourselves,
How did things become this complicated?
We even start to wonder whether if the moves we did were correct, or it made things more complicated than before. Either way, we’d never know.
At this point, some might just gave up. Leaving the puzzle for the next (unfortunate) problem solver. To the successors, who didn’t even witness how things were turned, the complexity might soars even higher.
And it’s not that seldom to witness a moment when it’s going to be marked as unsolvable, or maybe, to someone who could solve it, too exhausting to solve.
It doesn’t have to end that way, really.
In order to understand how things go south that quickly, we should understand the causes.
It all comes down to 4 incorrect mindsets:
1. Ignorance
The first step was one simple turn. What if we turn the cube back just right after the first turn? It might be a very simple puzzle anyone could solve, right? And please do tell me why you might not prefer being paid to solve a very simple problem over an unsolvable one.
By mindlessly turning the cube, we let things get worse even more.
By not stopping to turn after the first one, we ignore that it might be a problem for us, usually until it’s too late. And the baffling fact is, most peeps might believe that the snowball would hit once they weren’t around.
Oh, no, no, no.
The snowball doesn’t need a THAT long of a time to hit us hard like a truck.
2. Fear
Truly, fear is the mind killer. By continuing to turn the cube, we might actually solve the cube, someday. Who knows?
But fear eliminates our ability to simplify things, to see the silver lining, to see things optimistically, and adds another layer of complexity inside our mind and because of it, voila, we might not want to even turn the cube anymore. Yes, why should we? We might turn the cube to the wrong way anyway.
Thus, we stagnate. Leaving the matters in a firm state of unsolved.
3. Rush
Patience, nobody expects us to solve it as soon as possible. It’s a simple, casual play, no time limit. Yet we act hurriedly, without trying to understand the situation as a whole.
We just feel an over-expectation from imaginary party (no one, really). We put the unnecessary pressure to ourselves. We don’t try to stop and listen to the way things moved, or even care where things are ended up. We are in an imaginary hurry, and nobody could stop us.
And here comes the question, if this casual-play puzzle might be a marathon instead of a sprint, who’s gonna say that it’s not a multi-player instead of a single-player one?
It’s truly sad that due to the rush that exist only in our mind, we have missed every single thing.
4. Reactive
Being reactive lets us to have an understanding of things partially.
Without knowing the full story, we just try to turn things around by the heartbeat. Yes, we might solve the puzzle one day, but could you imagine the casualties?
And what if we turn things around because we reacted to our feelings and emotions, without a single care in the world to the feelings of the others? Even worse.
Problems will stack together, layer by layer, and things would get complicated. It’s like, the natural order of things. Just the way it is.
But everybody has problems, every single day. It’s not like we could avoid problems.
Things would just get more complicated because we are lacking the correct mindset/state of mind.
So keep in mind to always:
Keep things simple.
Be aware for the simple things.
Act when it’s still simple.
And if we are not playing it single-player, everyone might have different understanding, different point of view, and different solution. Naturally it would give more complexity, but whatever happens, focus to solve the puzzle together. Do not blame. We might not be able to do this alone.