You Have the Right to Be Complex

• When I was six years old, I knew I would be a veterinarian when I grew up.
• By the time I was nine, I had expanded my love of animals and knew I’d be a zoologist.
• By fourteen, I was certain I wanted to be a geneticist (thank you Jurassic Park).
• By eighteen, I had settled on becoming an engineer, first a software engineer, and finally a mechanical engineer.

If you’ve read the tales, you know I finally did earn a degree in mechanical engineering. . .only to spend the next fifteen years working in inventory and information systems and the subsequent five writing software (among many other things).

Growing up, one of my favorite things to eat — this will be disgusting to some — was peanut butter, butter, and medium cheddar cheese. I loved Brussels sprouts and hated asparagus. I also hated fish. (All fish was sushi to me.) Twice a year (at least) I would get the largest bubblegum milkshake money could buy to see if I could stuff every piece of already-stale gum in my mouth at once.

Now that I’m older, I don’t love bubblegum milkshakes anymore, but I do love asparagus (when cooked right). I’ve also come to love most types of fish, but still can’t handle sushi.

My professional dreams and wanderings and culinary likes and dislikes are just two facets of a complex mind and accompanying personality. Who we are is shaped by all the experiences and choices we make in life, no matter how insignificant they may seem.

Every feeling, every thought, every decision, every action and reaction become the sum of our existence. Those are the things through which we observe and experience the world. In that way, there is no objective reality, because we all experience the world around us through our own neurochemical processes and biases; the foundation of our likes, our dislikes, and our view of the world.

We’re really complex, and we’re entitled to be that way.

When I was five or six years old, my mom bought jackets for me and my two brothers that matched in style but differed in color. Mine was red. I loved that jacket. I wore it all the time until it was too small and worn out to qualify as a jacket anymore. I suppose that jacket informed me that red was my favorite color.

It’s been more than thirty years since I outgrew that jacket, but red is still my favorite color.

Perhaps it’s too broad a statement to say that all humans are complex. It is, however, something we’re all entitled to. No matter where you live, freedoms are, to varying extents, subjugated. They’re either repressed by force or by laws that are (hopefully) designed for the greater good of society. For example, even though I don’t agree with becoming intoxicated, I do believe people have the right to do so if they choose. However, they are not free from the consequences of potentially or actually bring harm to another person.

We are all entitled to our opinions (knowledge-based or otherwise), to freedom of speech, to be offended less frequently, and to listen to people with a completely different world view. We’re also entitled to engage in lively discourse over differences in policy and opinion. As Leslie Feinberg put it, “I reserve my right to be complex.”

The delineation between my right to be complex and infringing on the rights of others is not a fine line. It’s a vast gray area where opinion, culture, and policy often dictate behavior.

The high road in those situations is to err on the side of caution; working to avoid situations where my complexity has the capacity to hurt another person intentionally. Unfortunately, even intentionality is subjective. Billions of dollars are spent in courts every year fighting over what the intent behind something was.

Get out there. Give yourself permission to be complex, but remember to tread with care in those areas that cause hurt to others.

Thanks for reading!