Things Are Never Just One Thing

People really like to simplify things down. They say, if you hate your job, quit. If your significant other isn’t making you happy, leave. If that friend sucks, stop being their friend. If you want to change, do it.

But it’s never that simple. Things are never just one thing. A job is never just the one thing. You don’t even know if you hate your job. Maybe you hate your life. Maybe you hate yourself. Maybe there’s like ten things boiling beneath the surface of the job and quitting it isn’t going to make one damn bit of a difference.

A relationship is never that black and white. It’s never that easy to say: this isn’t working. There’s a million reasons why a relationship could be burning and sometimes only a fraction of the reasons is the actual relationship itself. Maybe you have a problem with commitment. Maybe you’re bored of life. Maybe you need to move. Maybe it has nothing to do with the love, but everything to do with what exists on the periphery of your love. Things are never one thing. Life is like the organs of the human body: it all connects, it all serves a purpose.

We bring so much to our jobs and friendships and relationships yet we simplify them down to a handful of things. Who are you being in your job? Who are you being as a lover, a friend, a parent, a daughter, a son, a sibling?

The thing about life is that every aspect of it runs together. Each tangent is like a river but eventually it all pools together into the same body of water. There’s no separating out one thing from another. You can’t compartmentalize no matter how hard you try to. How you feel about yourself is how you will show up in your life. That’s just how it goes. And how one part of your life is faring informs how another part is faring. Job stress leaks into relationship dissatisfaction leaks into snips at friends leaks into frustrated conversations with parents leaks into judgments of others on social media leaks into every fucking thing. You see? It all leaks. It all pools.