bhaskar saikia

“People think that complex is an advanced state of complicated. It is not.
A car key is simple. A car is complicated. A car in traffic is complex.”
— Zoran Perkov, Head of Technology Operations at IEX, as quoted in Flash Boys by Michael Lewis

There’s something quietly profound about this quote. On the surface, it describes systems — the difference between a simple object, a complicated machine, and a complex environment. But the more I sit with it, the more it feels like a mirror held up to the way we perceive the world, and perhaps even ourselves.

We often mistake complexity for sophistication.

We think that the more tangled something appears, the deeper it must be.
But sometimes, the truth hides not in the many threads — but in the stillness that ties them together.

Simplicity, Complication, and Complexity

A car key is simple: it does one thing, and it does it well.
A car is complicated: many parts, interlocked and precise, yet its behavior can be predicted.
But a car in traffic — that’s complex. It breathes, shifts, and evolves. It reacts to moods, decisions, delays, and unseen variables. It lives.

This small analogy holds a quiet truth about life itself.

We spend our days trying to “fix” things as though they were merely complicated — as if every problem has a direct solution, every heartache a reason, every dream a map.

But life, like traffic, is complex — it flows in ways we can only understand by being within it, not above it.

The Mistake of Control

We are taught to solve, to manage, to control. We tighten our grip when something moves unpredictably, assuming that more force means more understanding.

But complexity resists control — it invites awareness.

It asks us to watch the patterns, to learn the rhythm, to let go of the illusion that we are at the center of everything.

When we try to control what must be understood, we exhaust ourselves.
When we try to understand what must simply be lived, we find peace.

Simplicity isn’t ignorance. It is the grace that comes after understanding.
It’s the poet who finds the one word that carries a lifetime. The musician who leaves silence between notes. The tree that knows when to let its leaves fall.

The world, too, speaks in simplicity — but we often drown it in our noise.
We equate “simple” with “less,” when in truth, simplicity is refined essence. It’s what remains when we’ve understood enough to stop explaining.

Seeing as It Is

We rarely see things as they are.

We see through the lens of what we believe, what we fear, what we hope for.

Our perception bends reality, paints it in familiar colors, and calls it truth.

But when the mind grows still — when the noise of interpretation quiets — reality shows its subtle face. And we realize that the world was never complicated at all. It was only our perception that made it so.

Perhaps that is what Perkov’s words truly remind us of: that life is not a puzzle to be solved, but a pattern to be felt. That simplicity isn’t the opposite of depth — it’s the doorway to it.

To see things as they are — not as we label them — is to step into clarity.
And in that clarity, complexity turns into poetry.

---

Footnote:
Michael Lewis has long been one of my favorite writers — precisely because he is a master of narration. He has an uncanny ability to break down major economic and financial events into stories that feel human, vivid, and effortlessly clear. In a world that often confuses complexity with intelligence, Lewis stands as the true epitome of what I call “Simplicity is Refined Essence.”