The following meditation is titled “The Temptation to Oversimplify” from Thurman’s Meditations of the Heart.
There is ever present the temptation to reduce all problems to a single problem; to seize upon a single explanation for all the ills of life. In Moby Dick, Ahab reduces all evil to a single evil, the white whale. The white whale became to him the symbol of everything that was wrong in his experience, everything that was negative. If he could destroy the whale, then all evil would be destroyed. This is a common malady. As we contemplate our own lot, we can very easily single out a single circumstance which becomes for us the key to all our difficulties. We say, if I could get a job that I like, if I could live in another kind of place, if I had more money, if I could get rid of the pain in my back – if – if – if – then all my problems would be solved. Or again, we may think of all our experiences in terms that single out a particular virtue which becomes for us the ONE virtue in all of life. The ridiculous expression of this idea was voiced once by a man who said the resolution to all the problems of our age is a good five-center cigar. If we could just get a good five-cent cigar, this would be a good world.
It is a common remark now that what we need is integration. Our generation is made up of neurotics because we are not integrated. Such a point of view regards integration as one single but total experience of personality. We forget that when we seek integration it is always with reference to some aspect of our lives. A man is never integrated. But rather, he is integrated as to some particular aspect of his life experience.
Life is simple but always complex. Human life is simple but ever complex. There cannot be single solutions that are themselves total, because not only are we living organisms embodying varied stages of growth, development and experience at any particular moment, but life is also alive, complex and dynamic. There is no single evil but there are evils. It is hard to escape the necessity for singling out a particular thing and making it the symbol of all frustrations or all resolutions. When a man addressed Jesus, “Good Master, what shall I do?” Jesus replied, “Why callest though me good? There is none good but God.”