There is a lesson that keeps finding me. It arrives through different people, different conversations, and different versions of myself. Every time I think I understand it, another layer reveals itself.
The lesson is learning how to hold complexity.
For years, I approached gray as a necessity. It was a skill, a strategic advantage, my ability to navigate nuance when life refused to fit neatly into categories.
Over time, something deeper was emerging.
Grey stopped feeling like the space between black and white and started feeling like the fabric everything is made of.
Right now, I am seeing it everywhere.
I recently finished watching a television series about Dennis Nilsen, a serial killer in the United Kingdom. The facts are horrifying. Multiple people were murdered. Families lost sons, brothers, partners, and friends.
I am not here to critic the show in any capacity, but what spoke to me was the same lesson crying out for me to pay attention. My takeaway wasn’t about the crime itself, but holding the complexity of humanity. I’ve seen and heard thousands of stories, but they are now revealing nuances to me that I haven’t fully grasped previously.
Throughout the series, Nilsen repeatedly asks the police to help him understand himself. He claims he does not fully understand why he did what he did. He struggles to explain his motivations. He searches for answers within himself that remain frustratingly out of reach.
I found that fascinating.
For clarity, the murders themselves are not fascinating. The questions are.
Who am I?
Why do I do the things I do?
What exists beneath my awareness?
The scale is obviously different and the consequences are obviously different, yet the question itself feels universal. Every human being I know seems to be engaged in some version of that search. Trying to understand themselves, their desires, their wounds. We all seem to be trying to understand the patterns we continue repeating and why we react the way we react. We’re all trying to understand what sits beneath the surface.
The show did not stop at this singular perspective. It also worked to show the stories of the detectives, the families, the victims, the spouses, the lawyers. In it, like all stories, every character carried their own truth, their own pain. One specifically was a wife desperately wanting justice for her murdered husband. I understood her longing. I understood her anger. I understood her desire for someone to definitively acknowledge what had been taken from her.
At the same time, questions emerged:
What is justice?
What is it we are actually seeking?
A conviction?
A sentence?
An explanation?
Closure?
Peace?
The more I sat with those questions, the more I realized how often we confuse them with one another.
A conviction may satisfy the mind. A conviction may create certainty. A conviction may provide order. A conviction may answer questions.
Peace seems to belong to an entirely different realm.
The show left me thinking about how much of our lives are built around categorization.
Good.
Bad.
Victim.
Monster.
Sane.
Insane.
Premeditated.
Impulsive.
We create increasingly refined boxes and then spend enormous amounts of energy determining which box someone belongs in. The boxes serve a purpose. They help us navigate reality. They help us organize information, predict outcomes, and feel safe.
The mind is extraordinary in this way. It is constantly sorting, categorizing, gathering data, searching for patterns. All in an attempt to reduce uncertainty.
I watch it happen inside myself every day: a story forms, an assumption appears, a judgment arrives. In mere seconds, I’ve already finished a conclusion that has quietly presented itself before all of the real information has entered the room. The mind is doing exactly what it was designed to do.
The challenge seems to arise when we mistake its conclusions for the whole Truth because beyond the categories, another layer exists. A person’s story exists. Their emotions exist. Their perspective exists. Their (dare I say) “small T” truth exists. And beyond even that, something larger exists, the “big T” Truth. The facts. The observable reality. The pieces that remain regardless of how any individual feels about them.
The older I get, the less interested I become in choosing between those layers. I find myself wanting to hold all of them.
The facts.
The feelings.
The story.
The larger story.
My truth.
Your truth.
The truth that belongs to neither of us.
The more I practice this, the more I realize how difficult it is because our culture rewards certainty. Our institutions depend on certainty. Our politics thrive on certainty. Our identities often become attached to certainty.
Complexity asks something entirely different. Complexity asks us to remain curious longer than is comfortable. Complexity asks us to stay present when a quick conclusion feels easier. Complexity asks us to acknowledge what we know while remaining open to what we do not. Complexity asks us to hold seemingly contradictory things at the same time.
Accountability and compassion.
Responsibility and healing.
Logic and intuition.
Mind and soul.
The lesson keeps finding me because it seems to sit underneath so much of what creates division between people. We rush toward certainty. We rush toward labels. We rush toward conclusions. We rush toward sides. Then we lose sight of one another. I know this patterning all too well. I used to live in a prison that my mind built for me. I aced that test.
The more I observe this process, the more I wonder if one of the most important skills we can cultivate is the capacity to hold.
To hold information without becoming imprisoned by it.
To hold emotions without becoming consumed by them.
To hold a story without confusing it for the entire landscape.
To honor the mind without allowing it to dominate the experience.
To gather data while remaining open to mystery.
To focus on what is directly in front of us while simultaneously reading between the lines.
The more I sit with this, the more I realize that this capacity itself may be part of my medicine. Not because I possess it perfectly, but because I have spent years practicing it, both consciously and subconsciously, and the messaging is screaming at me from every angle to witness it.
I am my own embodied case study. I’ve spent years watching my own mind create stories and observing how quickly certainly arrives. Years discovering that every answer reveals another layer underneath it.
Maybe the lesson keeps finding me because I keep finding places where it applies in my own life.
Along the way, I also began noticing that this way of seeing is not typically experienced by others. My conversations around this topic leave others to say, “Wow. I’ve never thought about that.” to which I internally question how they could have never thought about that. It’s been happening my entire life and only now am I in a position where I can begin to understand that this is potentially a superpower of mine.
I can feel the pull toward certainty. I can understand the comfort of a category. I can appreciate the relief that comes from deciding who is right and who is wrong. Yet something in me keeps reaching for a larger container. A larger perspective. A wider lens. One that allows the facts to remain facts while making room for the humanity wrapped around them. One that allows the mind to gather information while remaining connected to something larger than the mind. One that allows complexity to exist without demanding immediate resolution.
This used to be business strategy. I didn’t have the capacity to hold that alongside the scope of humans. Now I can’t unsee the two things living side by side at all times.
So perhaps this is part of my work. Perhaps this is part of the medicine I am here to cultivate. Helping myself and others expand our capacity to hold. To hold contradiction. To hold uncertainty. To hold multiple truths. To hold grief and joy. To hold accountability and compassion. To hold what appears irreconcilable long enough for another layer to reveal itself.
These ideas are ancient. Wisdom traditions have pointed toward them for centuries. I am still learning them. Still practicing them. Still discovering new dimensions hidden inside them. And they continue to increase their volume.
The more I look around, the more I see how difficult this feels for many of us. The more I share these observations, the more I notice people pause. A question enters the room. A certainty softens. A new possibility emerges. I wonder if that is how I create change. One expanded perspective at a time. One layer at a time. One human being learning how to hold a little more complexity than they could yesterday.
The lesson keeps finding me because life keeps presenting opportunities for me to practice it, and every time I think I have reached the edge of understanding, another layer reveals itself.
The lesson remains the same. Only the terrain keeps changing.
I know this is the work and now I am questioning if this is my medicine.
Learning how to hold the black, the white, and the gray. Learning how to honor the mind while remaining connected to something larger than the mind. Learning how to see the human beneath the category. Learning how to see ourselves.
Again and again.
Probably for lifetimes.
