Why would I love the problems?
In the British mini-series “Obsession” from 2023, the female lead Anna Barton first tells her fiancé Jay, and later his father William, with whom she is having an affair, to accept that she has secrets and will never give certain answers. She does so with the advice that they should learn to love the questions.
What a great way to say it! It’s the glass half full, only much more awesome: learning something is always worthwhile. And who doesn’t want to love? It sounds like growth and satisfaction and mystery, while being nothing but a slap in the face.
What she says is actually a reference to a text written by Rainer Maria Rilke in 1903, which reads:
„Man muss Geduld haben mit dem Ungelösten im Herzen, und versuchen, die Fragen selber lieb zu haben, wie verschlossene Stuben, und wie Bücher, die in einer sehr fremden Sprache geschrieben sind. Es handelt sich darum, alles zu leben. Wenn man die Fragen lebt, lebt man vielleicht allmählich, ohne es zu merken, eines fremden Tages in die Antworten hinein.“
If you can love the questions, then perhaps you can also love the problems.
Fact is that I, at least, have noticed such a development in me in recent years, not only in my professional life: Whereas I used to follow the urge to solve problems quickly, today I often find it just as satisfying to first look with interest at what it is, what it means and how it came that way.
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Before we love the problems, they are something fundamentally unbearable. Something that needs to be eliminated, therefore solved, quickly. Problems make us nervous and may cause us pain.
Hurry up! The time it takes to solve them must be minimized. But because all this is the case, we don’t take a close look. Instead, we only pretend to look at a problem, immediately throw some unimaginative, blanket standard solutions at it, and see what happens.
Love the problems
When we love the problems, we recognize the problem’s right to exist. We can bear the fact that – just like us – the problem is HERE NOW. It has good reasons and a history and many details and effects on the situation. Not everything is as it should be.
Also, you can look at a problem openly and courageously, ready to engage with it and finally discover it. You can hold it in your hands, turn it around and look at it from all sides.
They are interesting, sometimes delicious and sometimes valuable when they reveal insights to me: What lies behind it, what led to it, what continues to keep it alive, what is good about it in the end, and for whom. The images that emerge in response to these questions are real, sometimes cynical, no-bullshit, but the naked truth. That is something I appreciate, as a counterbalance to the politically correct, superficial and deluded marketing bullshit we usually have to deal with in everyday life. (Someone else’s problem. Read more about it.)
So if I manage to experience things with a little distance – from a position of subjective security – and a clear view, then a certain lightness sets in. Everything seems a little more like a game – and one that I can win. In some cases, the lightness allows me to accept things the way they are. In other cases, it gives me the momentum and the confidence to change something.
And that is poison for the problem. Because when it realizes that you are staying calm, are not in pain and are not in a hurry, it gets scared. And this is the point at which you have a real chance to change something – if you want to.
Conclusion
One who loves the problems is solid and settled. He has an attitude of lethargy, of slowness, but also of calm and strength. He is confident and does, by most problems, not feel threatened in his existence. He can endure that a problem exists and remain calm. Calm enough to look at the problem with interest, and explore it.
He is sobered and realistic and a little hardened and knows that the world consists mainly of deficiencies because man is mainly a deficiency. That is why he is not interested in surface cosmetics and sugarcoating and political correctness, but rather in looking past these distractions to have a clear view of how things really are.
The basic idea is that problems are real, that it’s hard and that we probably won’t find a full, sustainable solution any time soon. And that you better accept this, and not lie to yourself and others: it will not be easy, and we will not have a great solution by tomorrow.
Whether you go one way (mindlessly throwing standard solutions at the problem) or the other (accepting the problem and studying it) – you won’t solve the problem. In the former case, you will turn away in frustration. In the latter, I believe, you will grow.