Problems
We encounter problems in our daily life all the time, and there’s no shortage of ways we respond to them. Most of the time, we move– almost automatically– into solving them. What will I have for dinner, how do I address this issue at work, what do I do about the leaking faucet. Sometimes we get overwhelmed or are unsure, but the basic instinct is to solve the problem.
We sometimes have other responses though too. Our first move may be to analyze. Complex problems frequently require thought, planning, and consideration before we can understand what we must do. Sometimes we overthink, but our ability to analyze is also a good move, particularly when faced with complex issues
We do not always respond to problems in ways that are productive– there are ways we often respond poorly. We might ignore problems that need to be addressed, minimize them, or freeze in analysis paralysis. Sometimes we’ll use drugs to avoid facing a problem, give up and become hopeless, or just walk away. Some problems can’t be solved, and our work focuses on accepting the situation as it is– or trying to adapt ourselves to a new reality. We might resign ourselves, or decide that it must be endured, that no course exists but to get through it. Fix, avoid, analyze or tolerate is a reasonable classification for how we respond to most of the challenges that confront us.
Moving Toward
But there’s another approach that I have found quite helpful in my life, and that is just sitting with the problem. This is not relevant for little problems, for fixable problems, and it often does not work particularly well for intellectually complex problems. Those need to be addressed directly, or thought through. But we all face challenges in our life that seem to recur. We try one thing after another to fix them. We analyze them, endure them, go around and around with them, try to ignore them, and yet they come back, over and over. It is for this type of problem that I find just sitting with it helpful.
The challenge is that sitting with the problem is hard. Our brain’s instinct, when we try to do this, is to continue to do all the things we normally do with the problem. We might intend to move toward it, but before long we will find ourselves analyzing, thinking about fixing, or minimizing. We attempt to understand it, apply our intellectual forces to it. We turn it over in our heads, ask why and how and imagine this change or that solution. Of course, we’ve done this a thousand times before, so after sitting with it for a while and analyzing it, we end up at a place where we’ve thought about it a thousand and one times. Unfortunately, that probably does not represent a lot of progress.
Or perhaps we’ll sit down with it and it becomes uncomfortable, so we’ll move our thoughts in a new direction, to avoid wallowing in the difficulty. In a way, fixing is moving against the problem, analyzing is moving around the problem, avoiding is moving away from the problem and endurance is tolerating the problem. Sitting with the problem is moving towards the problem, just being with the difficulty– whatever it is.
Not Running, Experiencing
If we are estranged from a loved one, the idea is not to spend our time thinking about how to solve that or repair the relationship, but instead to just be with that pain and distance. Perhaps we have deep regret for a decision we have made in our lives. Our usual mental responses might be to think about how to fix it, how to convince ourselves it is not that bad or important after all, to analyze why we made the decision. But what we rarely do is move towards the regret itself, to open our hearts to the difficulty of the decision, to say to ourselves yes, this is something that I regret. And then rather than running from that, or ignoring it, or trying to understand it, we are with it. The goal is not to think about the problem, but to experience it, fully and directly.
This is one another way meditation is so helpful, as it is training for directing and maintaining our attention. Being able to keep our focus and attention on any one place is hard enough– but doing it with something that is uncomfortable in this way is particularly difficult. Meditation also helps us notice our thoughts, notice how they move. That’s especially valuable here, where the tendency is to slip into thought patterns that are in any direction except toward the problem.
Why This Approach
There’s a reasonable question that naturally arises about doing this, namely, why? Why would I just sit with a lousy problem in my life, instead of trying to fix it or understand it or do something about it? Perhaps try it because you’ve done everything else. This is not the first option, this is the option for problems which are recurrent, that are not getting traction with other strategies, that we have been dealing with and which keep coming back. Or, try it because it is a different idea. I have never met someone (including myself) that would not benefit from more strategies to try in difficult situations. More to the point, however, is that often our attempts to get out of problems– to fix them, to avoid them, to analyze them, to re-cast them– are part of the problem itself. Our relentless responses to the issue we face is actually a part of the issue.
When we let go of trying to solve the problem, the problem itself often changes. We become so accustomed to looking for different tools in the toolbox that we forget that putting down the toolbox altogether is also an option.
Not an Answer
Having done this several times, the way it unknots a problem is interesting. I’ve had experiences where, in spite of not thinking about solutions or answers, the way forward appears fairly clear, and without a lot of internal conflict. Sometimes, sitting with something not looking for an answer leads to an answer. This is not to say that sitting with the problem is a way to an answer, but instead that sometimes when we just move toward the problem with no expectation of a solution, one arises. Other times, there is a shift– around perspective, salience or acceptance that has allowed me to see the problem from a new perspective. Sometimes doing this allows me to just let go of things, to hold onto them less. What actually is paradoxical about it is that part of fully experiencing the problem means abandoning resolution, abandoning the idea that we know what comes next. It is in that blank space that something changes.
If this sounds a little strange or mystical or woo-woo and that raises your skepticism, I don’t blame you. This type of learning is fundamentally experiential– I would not have believed it prior to having the experience, and can’t not believe it following the experience. We spend so much of our lives trying to change our circumstances, our thoughts, and our feelings that we rarely discover what happens when we stop. Sometimes the problem needs to be solved. Sometimes it needs to be understood. And sometimes, perhaps, it needs nothing more from us than our willingness to sit beside it.
Love,
Doc
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