“It depends.”

-me

My kids used to roll their eyes at this because I’ve been saying it for years. Every time they’d ask a question—whether about politics, school, or something ridiculous like which superhero would win in a fight—I’d say, “It depends.”

At first, they thought it was my way of dodging an answer. But as they’ve gotten older, they’ve started to see the world the same way. And it’s infuriating to them when others don’t.

We live in an age that demands instant certainty. Every question must have a right answer and a wrong one. Every issue must have a clear side. You must know what you believe, who you support, and why you’re right. The world tells you that you must pick the perfect college, the perfect profession, the perfect spouse, and the perfect plan—and if you don’t, you’ve failed. It’s a lie that masquerades as clarity but delivers only anxiety.

This pressure to choose—to always be right—is crushing people. It creates paralysis. Depression. Burnout. The fear that one misstep will derail everything. Somewhere along the line, we confused certainty with wisdom and speed with clarity.

The world wants you to believe in stark black and white. We’re told we must choose between freedom and safety, right and left, equality and merit, individualism and community. We’re told there’s always a correct answer, that compromise is weakness, and that any nuance means moral failure. But the real world doesn’t live in absolutes—it lives in shades and gradients, in the slow work of discernment.

That’s what this book is about. It’s not a book about politics. It’s a book about growth. About becoming the person you’re meant to be, not the one everyone else tells you that you have to be.

When we talk about binaries—freedom vs. safety, equality vs. meritocracy, or independence vs. belonging—they aren’t just political debates. They’re human patterns. The same “pick a side” thinking that divides nations is the same trap that poisons friendships, workplaces, and marriages. It’s the same thinking that convinces us that success and failure are opposites instead of teachers.

We are taught from childhood to see the world as a test. Education reinforces it. The factory model of schooling—born from the Industrial Revolution—rewards repetition, obedience, and certainty. Rote memorization replaces curiosity. Multiple-choice questions replace exploration. And when you finally do learn to ask good questions, the world punishes you for not coloring inside the lines.

Creativity is squeezed out of us early. “Think outside the box,” they say—but the box still defines the boundaries of what’s acceptable. Even rebellion is pre-approved. When I was young, I used to tell people, “I don’t want to think outside the box. I want to blow the box up.” I didn’t fully understand the nuance of that yet, but I think I do now.

We were never meant to live in boxes.

But boxes make people feel safe. Binaries are easy. They’re shortcuts. And in a world drowning in information, shortcuts are seductive. Thinking deeply takes time and effort. It requires asking hard questions, tolerating discomfort, and resisting the dopamine hit of easy answers. But if we want to grow, we have to choose the harder path—the one that doesn’t fit neatly on a bumper sticker.

Because saying “it depends” doesn’t mean there isn’t a good answer—or even a right one. It means the question itself isn’t finished yet. It means we need more context, more clarity, more conversation. “That depends,” I’ll say, “have you considered…?” or “It depends, do you mean X or Y?” “That all depends on how long.” The phrase is never a dismissal; it’s an invitation.

“It depends” means there’s more to learn. It’s a posture of curiosity. It’s a refusal to let slogans or social media feeds tell you what to think. It’s an act of rebellion in a culture that thrives on outrage and overconfidence.

And yes, this applies everywhere—politically, socially, emotionally, economically, personally. Because the same mindset that makes us pick fights online is the same one that makes us miserable in our own heads. When everything becomes an all-or-nothing proposition, every mistake feels fatal. Every disagreement feels personal. Every uncertainty feels like failure.

The truth is, life isn’t lived at the edges. It’s lived in the middle. It’s lived in the tension. The extremes are loud and dramatic, but the middle is where things actually grow.

The problem is that the middle requires patience. It requires conversation. It demands curiosity. You can’t just memorize it. You have to live there—sometimes uncomfortably. Certainty shouts. Curiosity listens. Certainty says, “I already know.” Curiosity says, “Tell me more.” Certainty wants to win; curiosity wants to understand.

This isn’t weakness. Curiosity is courage. It’s what keeps us learning when everyone else is shouting. It’s what keeps us building when others are burning things down. It’s what keeps us humble when arrogance is trending.

Somewhere, we forgot that curiosity built the world we live in. It’s what drove us to explore oceans and stars, to heal diseases, to imagine new forms of art and government and thought. Every innovation began as a question, not a declaration. But now, questions are dangerous again. Asking one in the wrong place can get you labeled, shamed, or canceled. And yet, the only way out of this mess is through them.

The world is complex. You are complex. Every relationship, every belief, every system you touch is more complicated than the slogans make it seem. When we reduce people and problems to simple categories, we lose not only accuracy—we lose empathy. We stop seeing others as people and start seeing them as positions.

That’s how “us vs. them” is born. It’s not just a political trick. It’s a psychological one. It makes us feel safer when we know who we are against. It makes us feel righteous without making us responsible. But if everyone is “them,” there’s no one left to build with.

We’ve mistaken the digital binary—ones and zeros, on and off—for the way reality works. We think we’re choosing clarity when we’re really choosing collapse. Machines can live that way. People can’t. We are not computers, and life is not code. We were given reason, empathy, and imagination so we could wrestle with what’s between the lines, not just recite what’s printed on them.

We’ve convinced ourselves it’s somehow easier to defend our side. It’s not. We’ve convinced ourselves the “other side” is just as extreme. They’re not. They are you, and you are they, and we are we. (I’m fairly sure that’s not what Lennon meant, but it works.) We can destroy a straw man that doesn’t exist. We can point a finger at a nebulous “them” and say they are everything wrong with the world. But that “them” is a façade. A farce. A fake of our own making, crafted to make us feel superior and to rally against a common enemy. But in doing so, we find ourselves at odds with nearly everyone.

Because at the end of the day, what do we mean when we say “us” or “them”?

Well… it depends.

(Thanks to everyone who made it to the end. This is a rough draft of the introduction to the latest book I’m writing: It Depends: Rejecting the Either/Or. Let me know what you think!)