Burn your problems
There is no big argument about this, any of us just by hearing the word “problem” automatically starts to unravel a huge amount of personal attributions concerning it — some of them pretty unpleasant, or at least dispensable. Memories and stories about some occasion(s) we found ourselves adrift, uncertain of what could happen, feeling vulnerable or even frightened. It is what it is! For the moment I can’t recall no-one that hasn’t been through the very familiar feeling and mindset a problem usually brings, everything seems to stop or get suspended and all our focus directs to it as if (almost) nothing else is going on in our lives. And yet, every time one problem arises we feel like it’s the first time — in a certain way it is, there’s no repetition to a problem, maybe a similar subject or vulnerability that looks the same, but in itself, a problem is always different. That’s also why it’s a problem, otherwise it would just be a repetition, which as a matter of fact we should really do our best to avoid.
But getting back to the point, I feel it’s generally acceptable that no-one likes to see himself put up to a problematic situation or having someone that is going through one. What is there so special with a problem that sucks all our attention, as if we got glued to it? Almost like we’re attached to it’s evolution and effects or results!
The truth is that a problem defies what we think we are and the way we see ourselves, our identity (let’s put it this way). It’s kind of a fundamental test to assess the appropriateness of our self, like if something was trying to tell us: “hey, maybe you and your ways are not that special, after all here’s something you are not being able to deal with”. This may be the most scary part, because it implies that there are somethings that needs changing; and if it needs to be changed it’s because it’s not functioning well; and if it’s not functioning well… hmm… self-worth there you go! In fact, a problem show us that something is not good, that it needs changing in order to be overcome, and that will demand effort, realigning, self-observation, trying and failing, frustration, but will also represent discovery, learning, self-growth, conquering and evolving.
There’s this author I truly love (Guy Ausloos, a Psychiatrist and Family Therapist) that states that a family only poses itself problems it has the ability to solve — what he calls the principle of family competence. I believe that this same principle applies to individuals alone. We all have the necessary competences or abilities to solve the problems we face, otherwise we wouldn’t have posed them as such, to begin with. Yes, a problem challenges our conceptions, our thinking and behavior patterns, our structures, our attitudes and habits, but it’s like a plea to awaken our abilities and find better and more positive ways to deal with life — it calls out for learning and development. It allows us to complexify our internal functioning into a degree that creates the possibility to harbor this new life demands, not anymore as a problem, but as another challenge overcome, a new learned skill, an opportunity for growth and another steady step in this continuously changing path that is life.
It is essential for the maintenance of life that we keep changing. Change is the only unchangeable thing about life, and only makes sense like this: the continuous evolution throughout progressively higher states of development, knowledge and wellbeing. The more we heighten the complexity of our state of being, the closer we get to this state of superior integrity from which true knowledge (not merely information) and creation becomes possible. With this, we become more able to connect more positive and profoundly to other human beings and to the world, have higher and abundant experiences in our lives, bond and understand more thoroughly our feelings, thoughts and emotions; in other words, living a more meaningful, fulfilling and exciting life.
On the other hand, we must also acknowledge that a problem can lead us into a blockage of our functioning, a stagnation of processes. Being unable to solve a situation, to elicit the necessary skills to deal with it, or finding the braveness to face the problem and find solutions, move on and grow, creates an unfillable gap, facing a jump we couldn’t complete, and with that comes the tremendous sense of suffering.
But there’s a great deal of choice involved in this — not a conscious one, I believe, no one chooses freely to suffer and become blocked. But I mean choosing a pattern that no longer serves its purposes, choosing to stop a movement because it got to scary or started to look hard to achieve, choosing to feel uncapable and blur the discernment, ultimately choosing the fear of facing our own limits and flaws, the demons inside. We don’t choose pain, I know, but we can choose to become still, to allow fear and anxiety win over us; we can choose to hide, not believing in ourselves and in our strengths, or to run away not wanting to see and accommodate on unsatisfaction. It’s a free and valid choice, of course, but as any other action or choice, it brings consequences. In this case we put in motion a movement that resists life and it’s flow, opposes to the dance of being and in this sense, what in fact we are doing is to choose suffering.
Of course it’s not easy to jump into the unknown — this is our life, not bungee jumping. It is very difficult to expose to uncertainty, to discomfort, to pain. But change is not about what we individually want or wish, it is an imperative of life, it’s essence, so it will keep demanding from us along the path the same way we’ll have to keep walking it. The unknown is like an abyss, I admit, but it is precisely in front of it that change puts us, and because we become hesitant or uncertain of taking the step, a problem is like that little push from behind that throws us exactly to where we need to be.
Better to reframe it here for a moment. We know a problem takes us out of the comfort zone, it challenges our thinking and behavior patterns, our emotions and automated functioning. It creates the need to reconsider ourselves and our ways, to try different things, to create anew, and some of them even demand us to reinvent completely as human beings. Is this necessarily bad? Well, I don’t think so. Unpleasant yes, but deeply it’s an offer of growth we cannot refuse.
When we face something this challenging, that swipes us of from a former believed solid structure, there is this opening to discover our limitations and the possibility of expanding them, embarking into a more fulfilling reality. On the one side, we may be creating new ways and patterns on dealing with life and, on the other side, we can just be reaping the fruits of what we have been sowing. Because sometimes, a problem can work as a reminder that it’s time to start “harvesting”, that all we’ve been upgrading and working in ourselves is ready to be used, especially when we did the learning but stay kind of numb in older patterns, not putting the skills we’ve been building to a decisive test. Even this step is not easy, it can be much more comfortable to keep things on the known, where we are already, and postpone change and all the unknown instability it can bring with it. But in the end the effort has already been done, so it’s a matter of jumping to that unknown and collect the reward.
Seeing a problem as something that challenges our structure and habits, can have an incredible transformative power, waking up strengths, courage, passion, skills that we didn’t think we had. It leads us to confront the image we have of ourselves which helps us to review and create a new one, opening the path to the realization that we are more than any of those images we may create. They are merely an ensemble of beliefs that can be substituted by a more evolved set until we finally realize that beliefs don’t correspond to reality itself, and ultimately that real creation lies beyond any illusive construction and repetition of habits. All the beauty comes when we open to the unknown and spaciousness we begin to understand is inherently present in any event (object, situation, person, including us,..), allowing us to be guided on the unveiling of the reality that takes place at each and every moment, if we only dare to experience it without preconceptions.
So, the challenge may be keep dealing with reality, with life, the best way we can at each given moment, doing it with a full open heart, and from there create and evolve. Even if we search a solution that we intuitively know that isn’t real, we keep doing our best, remaining open and honest, overcoming our limiting beliefs and habits. This, if nothing else, will put us with the “hands on the dirt”, experiencing life directly, without subterfuges, feeling it’s taste, it’s textures, and learning each step of the way, becoming better and renewed. It is this the value of a problem, it takes away from us the false excuses we use for keeping our inertia, it throws us into life itself, with no sweeteners, it demands us to be conscious of ourselves, of our relation with everything (the world, the events, the moments, us, others, …), of life and its fragrant dance, which we’ll happily dance in truth and connection.
