So, What's the Problem?

So, what’s the problem? We have no idea.

We think we know.

We think our problem is our pain, our debt, our parents, our spouse, our children, the death of a loved one, the war, the terrorists, the Republicans, the Democrats, the cancer, the child molesters…the list goes on and on. Think about your biggest problem right now. Are you sick? In trouble? Have you lost your job or somebody close to you? Has your spouse cheated on you? Are you in debt? Perhaps you don’t know what to do with your life? No doubt all of us can identify at least one fairly serious problem in our lives. If not, we will.

We have sought solutions in myriad forms ranging from drugs to religion, from forgiveness to revenge. We’ve been taught to turn the other cheek, to be grateful our situation isn’t worse, and to pray. Sometimes we feel better for a while, but inevitably, a new problem’s ugly head demands our attention.

We encounter our first problems in this world within seconds of being born. Suddenly we are cold. We can’t breathe, and someone has smacked a part of ourselves that we didn’t even know we had! We may not “know” that we have problems at this point, but they are there. As luck would have it, somebody quickly finds a solution for us.

This prototypical moment begins a pattern repeated for much of the rest of our lives. In this moment we have our first introduction to solving one problem (the inability to breathe) with a solution (a quick swat on the backside), which quickly becomes our new problem (the pain in our newly discovered bottom). Soon, we begin to recognize a discomfort in our bellies that seems to disappear after we cry and food shows up. Gratefully, somebody starts patting us on the back to solve a new pain, a new problem. Obviously, none of this is conscious in a newborn. We don’t understand the problem or the solution, but we are certainly receiving our first messages about the world and the beginning lessons in our life-long relationship with our problems.

By the time we’re three, we’ve usually begun to experience another one of the problems with problems: solved problems don’t always go away. Again, at the age of three we don’t think about this consciously, but we certainly begin to recognize it as a reality. That hunger that we cried about yesterday is still here today. We also begin to fundamentally recognize that solutions change, too. Sometimes crying gets us dinner; sometimes crying gets us sent to our room. We begin to learn to develop new solutions, and then again, those solutions become new problems. The food, which we thought was the solution to our hunger problem, turns out to be spinach, Brussels sprouts or liver and onions, and we cry again.

By our pre-teen years, we’ve really begun a new phase of our relationship with our problems. We’ve begun to define ourselves by our problems. We’re the short kid. We wish we were like Mike. We’re the kid with acne. We wish we had Jessica’s skin. We don’t have enough money. We wish that we’d been born in another family. We aren’t smart enough, strong enough, or cute enough. We’ve identified with our problems; we’ve indeed become our problems.

And then sometimes, we identify with the seeming solutions to our problems, our defenses against these problems. We’re the kid with the really cool car. We’re the kid with the biggest allowance. We’re the lead in the play. Thank goodness. We learn to be grateful for these saviors. We desperately hope these solutions don’t disappear. That would be a problem. We’re happy for a while.

Amazingly, the older we get, the more problems we seem to have. Sure, we seem to have the food and shelter problems handled, but what about college for the kids? What about cholesterol? What about the Middle East? The problems keep rising up, and we keep beating them down with potential solutions. Most of us just want to be happy.

Think for a minute about your day, about your life. What happens in your day that isn’t the result of a problem or a potential solution to a problem? We went to sleep last night to solve the problem of weariness. When we woke up this morning, most of us ran to the bathroom to solve yet another problem. We had a bagel and coffee to solve the problem of hunger, perhaps a hangover, for a while. We brush our teeth to solve the bad breath problem and hopefully the plaque problem. We get dressed to solve our body temperature and modesty problems. We drive to work to solve our proximity problem. Our work, of course, solves our unemployment problem, not to mention our hunger, shelter, healthcare, new car, new couch, retirement, don’t- want-to-be-kicked-to-the-curb problems! Walk through your day. Pay attention. Be honest. On some level are your relationships with your loved ones there to solve your loneliness, sense of belonging, and survival problems? Of course, sometimes our loved ones are the problem! Is that TV show or good book there to solve your boredom problem, or maybe it just keeps you from having to face another problem?

The point here isn’t to convince you that everything in your life is a problem, although if you went that far, don’t despair. You may be on to something. The point is for us to think, to challenge the same old way that we’ve looked at ourselves, our lives, and our problems. Einstein wisely observed that the significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them. Have you ever thought about who you would be without your problems? Have you ever wondered why we have problems? What is their purpose? Many of us have asked these questions at some point in our lives, and most of us have just decided that that is the way it is. Some have decided that these are lessons that we have to learn. We are certainly learning something. The question is, what? What indeed. This blog is dedicated to finding out. Exercises like the preceding one are proverbial rabbit holes. We will certainly go down many in the following posts, not in an attempt to find the end, but rather to facilitate a new level of thinking. How far you go is up to you.