Complexity is everywhere. More precisely, complexity is anywhere there is something. Whenever you have a thing, you have a system - almost all things are made up of smaller things and connect to other things in some way.
Systems are always complex. This can seem counterintuitive. Systems are the opposite of disorder, so we might think that by bringing order, systems simplify chaos. Really, the converse is true. Disorder is simple; it’s simply what happens when nothing is done. Creating and maintaining a system, however, needs something to be done; it takes work.
Therefore, systems entail work, and work entails complexity. Think of anything you can name - a grain of sand, the sound of wind, a galaxy filled with stars; any thing. Think of what it takes for that thing to exist, to stay as it is, or for it to become a different thing. Sand, sound and stars are all complex systems made of working parts: matter and energy that do something in relation to each other.
People are also systems, operating on many different levels, from the physical to the cognitive and emotional. All systems are special, but people are unusually special systems, because they are systems that know something about what it is like to be them. This awareness, which we call consciousness, comes in the form of feelings.* Feelings are an experience we have that tells us what it is like to be us in a particular moment - hungry, anxious, cared for, or anything else we feel.
More specifically, feelings tell us about needs that must be addressed. Addressing a need takes work: we must find food, escape a threat or maintain the relationships that provide the care we need. This is the work we must do as human systems to maintain ourselves, to survive.
People, like all living systems, are particularly complex - we constantly have many needs at different levels.** Inevitably, this means it is impossible to have all of our needs met at once, all of the time. Our unmet needs are felt as feelings, often conflicting.
An important feeling is frustration, a form of anger - it can be part of what we feel when we are faced with a need that can’t be met. Sometimes, we are stopped in meeting our needs by our circumstances, sometimes by other people. Sometimes we stop a need being met ourselves, usually because meeting it would risk not meeting another important need.
Because contradictory needs are a function of our experience of the complexity we are part of, we can feel imprisoned by them. But we do not have to be slaves to our feelings, however inevitable or difficult they are. If we can remember that feelings are really information about our needs, we have the opportunity to meet our needs more usefully, or at least to understand them better for what they are.
In the case of anger, the feeling is not only a warning that an important need is not being met, but also a sign that we care enough about ourselves to fight back. Anger is the feeling of the will to live.
* With thanks to Mark Solms for opening my eyes to the full implications of this insight.
** Ultimately of course, every thing, including us, is part of the universe, the most complex system we can know about.