Were there ever simpler times? In our memories, we're able to pare an image or a sensation down to its simplest, usually its most extreme, (and therefore most memorable)form and recall it as bad or good. Simpler times can apply to any event or period far enough removed from the complexity of our own analysis. Of course, I look back at childhood and try to shift all the sensations around until they create a solid colored side or a cohesive image.

But the times themselves, whether 10 years 20 years from right now, or the present moment itself, must all either exist simply or with impenetrable complexity. Because any timeline is a succession of happenings, mostly reactions. The complexities all come from a skewed and relative perception. The minutae of a current or passing sensation or event draws out each individual possibility and outcome to be analyzed and scrutinized with obsessive precision.

It's only when a moment passed and we only observed one of the millions of possible outcomes that we are able to claim the simplicity of any past experience. We end up forgetting the fretting and vascilation and the disproportionate magnification of every new development. We did this as children and did it during our most complacent periods in life. For me, I wonder if the complacency was a result of the simplicity.

What is known for certain is that there are no complex situations. There are only conflicts in preference and precedents set by previous loss or fear that we're either attempting to correct for or trying not to be ruled by. All times are as simple as we want them to be and our current lives can be as well. Unfortunately, since I constantly puruse the most potentially satisfying path, which just as with stocks is invariably the riskiest, I continually fall into pits of nostalgia where I fondly remember more comforting and ultimately less fulfilling times. Of course, the debate between ultimate fulfillment at the expense of contemporaneous happiness is a different topic altogether...