Falling in Love with the Problem
Because the middle is all there is
You’ll never reach where you’re going.
There is no end, where the sitcom wraps up, you’ve rounded home base, and the final page has been turned.
Unless you die, I guess, but then who cares.
What I mean is that every time a goal is achieved, it immediately births new goals. Reaching the new level of accomplishment only serves to open up a new vantage point of what to conquer next, if our intention from the outset was to achieve the goal.
You fell in love with the Solution. The big finish line at the end that signals when all of the actions were worth the effort. Everything up to that point led up to the Solution, and were thus means to an end.
Which often means that every point between Start and Solution was a blur with a vector, action that is meant to progress the storyline and reach the conclusion.
Because the conclusion is when we will finally be happy. Finally be worthy.
Maybe I’m a bit too much of an existentialist, but when I question myself on why the Solution was the happenin’ spot to be, I circle in on some version of ‘my ego felt better perceived here’. Once I crossed that line, I became ‘Person who Did the Thing’ and that meant that my existence, my brief little flickering flame of consciousness, had value and merit.
But that’s weak sauce. First of all, because I do not want to depend on any event to certify my existence. From the very first principle, I don’t think there is much to do while being alive, except to be incredibly grounded in every moment, and to try to make those moments as high quality as possible (quality is a very broad term, said more precisely as qualia).
By chasing Solution, all awareness of the middle ground is lost, and existence narrows in to a future state. Thoughts of crossing the finish line become the reason for action, and that’s in the future. Which means I am never in the present, never in the grounded state, never truly aware of the experience of my senses. I’m essentially fast-forwarding through life, and pausing at these pre-determined moments to bask in what boils down to insecurity, but on the surface looks like achievement.
I do not want that to be the case. I want to be immersed in the journey. I want to be sensually aware of every hammer swing as I tap away at the marble sculpture of my life, and notice every chip in the stone and cloud of dust.
The best way to be immersed in the journey is through enjoying the problem. By falling in love with the Problem, I am deep in every middle ground. If the fun is the wrestling and not getting my hand raised, then I can just wrestle all the time and feel good about it, and getting my hand raised will still feel awesome. Loving the Problem doesn’t mean you don’t care about the Solution, it just means that Solution is not the focus.
It means that I am tangibly finding a new way to feed the same existential need.
As humans, we all unconsciously battle with the horror that our existence is meaningless, and that becomes a looming boogeyman, which we battle through achievement.
By minimizing the same battle into every event, I am forcing many little miniature instances of imposing my will (and thus my ability to have the universe react to my existence). The individual Problem becomes my foe, and the only way to validate my existence is to wrestle with it.
On an actionable level, this happens by being very aware of when I am feeling burdened by a problem. I start to feel avoidant, give in to distraction, become irritable, and pessimistic. I’ve been here often when things I try do not give me quick positive feedback.
“Ah, there you are”, I think to myself. “My old friend, Problem”.
Problem is challenging me to wrestle. To determine if I can figure out a way to beat him, to play a game we’ve played thousands of times before. A game that I’ve come to really enjoy, whenever I stop hinging my value on getting to Solution. A puzzle that lets me use any resource and tactic in the universe to try to solve.
And when I’m enjoying my wrestling match with Problem, I find myself being really present.
And that’s all I really want, after all.