1: Author and podcaster Sam Harris was at lunch with a friend.
He remembers “moaning on about the various problems he was confronting in his work,” Oliver Burkeman writes in his book Meditations for Mortals.
Sam’s friend interrupted him mid-flow. “Were you really expecting to have no more problems at some point in your life?” she asked.
Her question was jarring. It suddenly occurred to him that he “had been subconsciously proceeding on the basis that such a time would eventually arrive,” Oliver shares.
Reflecting later, Sam says, “I was tacitly assuming that I should be able to get rid of all my problems. Even though this sounds ridiculous, that was implicit to my thinking and my emotional life, to the way I was meeting each new problem.”
Wowza. Now that’s an insight.
Oliver writes: “He’s surely far from alone. I suspect that most of us, except perhaps the very Zen or the very elderly, move through our days with a similar if largely unconscious assumption that at some point—maybe not soon, but eventually—we’ll make it to the phase of life which won’t involve confronting an endless fusillade of things to deal with.”
He continues: “The unfortunate consequence is that we experience our ordinary problems—the bills to pay, the minor conflicts to resolve, each little impediment that stands between us and realizing our goals—as doubly problematic.
“First, there’s the problem itself. But then there’s the way in which the very existence of any such problems undermines our yearning to feel perfectly secure and in control.
“So we spend our lives leaning into the future,” Oliver notes, “unconsciously deeming whatever’s happening now to be fundamentally flawed, because it’s marred by too many problems. And quite possibly deeming ourselves to be fundamentally flawed, too—or else wouldn’t we have figured out some way to eliminate all these problems by now?
“Yet the reality, as [Sam] goes on, is that ‘…life is unending series of complications, so it doesn’t make any sense to be surprised by the arrival of the next one.'”
2: Getting better at getting better is what RiseWithDrew is all about.
Monday through Thursday, we explore ideas from authors, thought leaders, and exemplary organizations.
At the end of each week, we are exploring some of the life lessons Oliver shares in his wonderful book Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts.
So what exactly is a problem?
Oliver believes it is just a word we use when we bump up against something we can’t control.
“It takes only a little further reflection,” he observes, “to see that we wouldn’t really want life to be otherwise. It would be nice to be able to skip the scariest or most overwhelming problems. But to face no problems at all would leave us with nothing worth doing; so we might even say that coming up against our limitations, and figuring out how to respond, is precisely what makes a life meaningful and satisfying.”
Okay, then.
Think about the activities we engage in after a hard day at work.
“We play board games, or watch police dramas, or learn musical instruments, or try our hand at cooking new dishes—none of which,” he notes, “would be any fun if it weren’t for the problem-solving involved.”
3: When we consider the reality that there is never a day coming when we have no problems, our first reaction may be “peevishness.”
“Wait,” we say, “that’s not what I signed up for!”
But then another insight comes which leads to “an unclenching,” Oliver believes: “If I no longer have to fight against the sheer fact of encountering problems, because that’s a battle I’ll never win, I get to dive more fully, perhaps even with relish, into the problems I actually have.
“I no longer have to remain in the posture—absurd for finite humans, for whom time is so precious—of trying to get the present out of the way, en route to the problem-free future. And I am free to aspire not to life without problems, but to a life of ever more interesting and absorbing ones.”
Oliver recalls a friend of his “vividly recalling the uplifting and energizing moment when, feeling burdened like Sam Harris by the endless problems that seemed to get in the way of her doing her job, it dawned on her that the problems were the job. Anyone, or a piece of software, could do her job, if it weren’t for the problems. Her unique contribution lay in her capacity for solving them.”
Problems. Are. The. Job.
“Beyond the mountains, there are always more mountains,” he writes, “at least until we reach the final mountain before our time on earth comes to an end. In the meantime, few things are more exhilarating than mountaineering.”
More next week!
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Reflection: Am I unconsciously waiting for a problem-free future, or can I reframe each challenge as a chance to learn and make my life more meaningful?
Action: This week, when faced with an everyday obstacle, pause and remind myself: the presence of problems doesn’t mean something has gone wrong. Solving problems is what makes work and life worthwhile—and what helps me grow.
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