The Problem With Problems
“Dèyè mòn gen mon” — “Beyond mountains there are mountains”.
I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to overcome struggle. On the surface, this sounds silly, I know. Aren’t we all trying to overcome life’s challenges? Although what I have recognized recently is this limiting and compulsive belief that if I work hard enough or long enough I will somehow eliminate the challenges surrounding me. As if there is a way for me to work myself out of struggle. It’s probably not shocking to hear that I haven’t figured this out or done a good job at it. Rather, it has led me to the brink of burnout.
Life is never void of challenge. I’ve always known this intuitively, but I have been looking for that miracle elixir that if I just found would allow me to fix this difficult and troublesome truth. I have been reading Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals and he encourages all of us to “develop a taste for problems” because problems are not going away anytime soon. Well that is until we’re dead and no longer here to deal with them.
When I spend all my time trying to get ahead of life’s challenges, I often end up making them worse. Part of this is because of the underlying expectation that I can eliminate all of them in the first place. This causes me to begin to resent a life with problems which in turn causes me to resent my life. As you can imagine, this isn’t healthy or helpful. I would imagine that a good amount of other people are trying to do a similar thing. We overwork and we toil with the premise that if we just worked longer, harder, and more efficiently, we would somehow eliminate all the pain from our lives.
Unfortunately, pain is inevitable. Challenges will always be waiting for us. Maybe if we could learn to embrace this reality, we would be better equipped to handle the difficulty. Maybe this isn’t something to conquer but something to embrace. After all, none of us want to work ourselves to death only to find that this pursuit of pain avoidance and compulsive working only ends in futility. There has to be a better way.
As cliche as it sounds, we only have this one life to live here on earth in this present form. Yes, it comes with struggle, challenges, beauty, and surprises. Maybe the way to a more flourishing life is to embrace what Burkeman is proposing, which is to flip the script and learn to enjoy the problems. They are indications that we are alive after all. Getting ahead, frantically working, and moving fast are all ways to avoid the present moment and the present moment is all we ever really have.
Wherever you find yourself on this journey of problem-solving, you are not alone. We are all trying to figure out how to exist in this place with as much joy as possible.
What does it look like for us to embrace the challenges of this day?
How might a change in perspective lead to more flourishing and joy?
