What is the Problem?

In life it is said, we often find “more problems than answers”; we attract calamities to ourselves with an almost superhuman ease, while grace and fortune stubbornly resist all our efforts of charm and cunning. It is also a well-known truth however, that one man's problem is another man's blessing to which the rule may also be inversely applied, and so before we complain about our problems we better be sure that we are actually in possession of a real one.

In the strictest possible sense, we might distinguish a real problem from a false one by the condition that any real problem will always work against our advantage in every case, whereas a false one will only prove problematic here and there. But very rarely if ever can we imagine such a cast-iron example: Failing to gain asylum to a country might seem like a predicament free of any possible benefit, however for all we know gaining it may have very well lead to a fate worse than death. Losing the love of our life may seem unbearable with no positive outcome at all, but we could well imagine a situation in which their continued presence may have indirectly lead to the death of our whole family. Even taking an extreme example in which we ourselves die an untimely and tragic death, such a tragedy may also be considered a great blessing in that it has ultimately delivered from the slow and tedious death of old age. And so if there is any real predicament to be faced, it is really no more than our inability to know for certain whether our disappointments are blessings in disguise, or whether our blessings merely conceal further disappointments.

So let us look at this problem; the only one we ever have – our predicament of not knowing whether we have been cursed with problems or graced with good fortune, what would happen if we could know for sure whether a situation would in the long-run turn out to be advantageous or not? Well naturally we would be able follow each and every path we knew would lead to a favourable outcome, and in doing so create heaven right here on earth. But if we are convinced such a world would be heaven manifest, we have perhaps misunderstood the entire notion of paradise altogether: While it may be 'heavenly' to see every one of our plans come to fruition immediately and exactly as we envisaged, we would have also in the process cut ourselves off from the possibility of generating any new ones, since as every successful person knows: 'Good plans are not conceived in the comfort of security but in the turmoil of defeat'. By necessity then, our paradise would have to be one in which we could just as much expect disaster and defeat as success and bliss; an ethereal wonderland where good luck and bad luck happily existed side by side. If this is our definition of heaven however, could it not be that we are already in it? We seem after all, to have just described the exact conditions we find ourselves in.

Such a conclusion may not immediately seem obvious. It could well be argued in fact that the central flaw with our world is that our problems are often so many that we are not propelled by them into greatness, but mired down by them into self-despair. We are all familiar enough with those unfortunate individuals who have been disproportionately burdened with homelessness, terminal illness as well as a lack of steady employment. For these sorry people the possibility of rendering their situation as hopeful rather than tragic seems slim if not impossible. However, before we judge how many problems is one too many, it seems that we must first ask whether such a person would in fact recognise the blessing in having their situation completely transformed. All too often we accept good fortune not in the manner of a thankful adult but as a spoilt child finally receiving a present: "About time! I wondered when exactly you were going to give me my just deserts. Thank goodness you finally have!" And in this way it seems that our over-riding burden is not whatever positive accumulation of burdens we feel we have we have been unfairly apportioned, but rather the negative burden of simply failing to appreciate our blessings. It is perhaps only the individual who expects nothing from the universe and seeks nothing in return who is able to transcend this thankless state of mind and cherish every blessing that comes their way. This is the archetypal monk or sage presented to us throughout world religion. The person who has finally 'got it'. But if we think for one second that that we can transform ourselves to become this sort of person then we will have only succeeded in multiplying our burdens even further: If there is any central canon to the world's religions it is that as much as we would like to be Dogen or one of Christ's apostles we can only really succeed in being ourselves. This does not of course mean that we should not seek inspiration from the sage. It simply means we should not frustrate ourselves by mimicking something impossible. The sage after all is not some cosmic super being immune to all the horrors and disappointments that life naturally brings, the sage is only a sage in as much as he understands one simple thing – that in frustration resides the seeds of peace, and that in peace lurks the embryo of frustration.

Reflecting upon this subtle yet obvious truth and applying it to our original problem then: 'How do we distinguish our blessings from our misfortunes?' it appears we already have our answer: 'There are no inherently problematic or fortuitous situations. I’m afraid all this time you’ve been trying to work out whether the hill is an interpolation of the valley, or the valley an interruption of the hill when there is in reality no correct view to be had. Both perspectives may be interchanged ad infinitum.' Realising this we may no doubt get it into our heads that we have finally uncovered the secret that will win them the game: 'If every crisis is potentially a blessing in disguise then how wonderful! From now on I shall invert my perspective from now on so that all I see is blessings!' But this is quite mistaken. Being enlightened to the fact that problems and good fortunes are only constructs of our minds does not now mean it is practical (or even possible) to embrace every woe as a blessing. It means having the good sense to embrace our woes as woes. It is only in this way that they will take root as our catalysts for future growth and blossom into blessings. In doing so, we may natrually wish to recognise and cherish our blessings once they have finally flourished as well, and in many ways this can often prove the greatest challenge of all. But in reality our challenge is really no more strenuous than the spontaneous deduction our eye makes that there must be a 'hill' every time it sees two valleys next to each other. In the exact same sense, we need only take note of the problems going on all around us in order for the blessings right in front of us to fall into view. If we can adeptly master this, then in the most practical sense possible we will have grasped what every sage has known all along: “problems and successes are only a matter of perspective.”

The Perfect Line

While most of us probably agree that for for a life to be meaningful it must be given over to some purpose, what this purpose should actually amount to is usually not so easy to agree upon. Some of us may feel that the meaningful life is best attained by raising a family, others through the creation of wealth or employment, while a number of us may believe that meaningful life is one in which we seek spiritual advancement or the pursuit of our hobbies. Although each of these possible ways of leading a meaningful life has its own merits, it is perhaps the artist Will Eisner who provided us with the best solution when he once remarked that the purpose of his existence was no more than to “attempt to draw the perfect line”. Since Eisner was an artist there is a good chance he was speaking literally at the time rather than metaphorically, however taken liberally ‘the perfect line’ might just as well refer to the pursuit of any endeavor or action perfected – our desire to paint the perfect picture, to run the perfect business, to cast the perfect line, to raise the perfect family. In every case our pursuit of flawlessness provides us with the excuse to get out of bed every morning, since we can always try better than we did the day before.  

While this might initially seem reasonable, if we understand perfection as that which can never be fully attained, we may be worried that by constantly pursuing it we are in no more enlightened a position than a person running around chasing shadows. If on the other hand, we are able to recognise that perfection is really no more than the 'carrot on the stick' we place under our nose to spur us on, such issues are immediately put to rest: Perfection is really just a means of benign self-deception. This is surely what is meant when people tell us to: “grasp the world in your hands” or “reach for the stars” It is not that anyone is suggesting that these things might actually be possible; but that if we set our sights high enough not only we will succeed in our more realistic ambitions, we will have endless room for improvement too.

Occasional successes in our goals may of course temporarily delude us that we are on the right track towards the complete fulfillment of our ideals, but as life plays itself out it should become ultimately clear that there is no end to our personal improvement; we can always be better siblings, better artists or better employers. While to be continually thwarted in our ambitions like this might strike us as depressing, this is in fact a great cause for celebration as the complete fulfillment would ultimately entail a complete end to our purpose. It is only when there is nothing left to strive for at all that we have genuine cause for worry. This is perhaps why every businessman who starts out with the ambition to make their millions and retire, upon achieving their goal continues to accumulate even more money past the point where it could make any tangible difference to their lives – it is striving itself that gives purpose and meaning to our lives, money or any other object of desire is only its side-effect.

This is not to say however, that whatever we strive for is irrelevant in itself: There will always be additional ways in which our ideals either uplift us those around us or alternatively impoverish our existence and others. The point is rather that journeys are always far more interesting than destinations, struggles infinitely more rewarding than successes. Why else would we continually find pleasure in those cartoons in which the coyote never quite catches the roadrunner, or the cat never quite manages to lay his paws on the mouse? The satisfaction we derive from them is surely the same pleasure we take in our own struggles, which despite so often leaving us empty handed, never fail to thrill us with the possibility of a good chase.  

Where Tom the cat is happy to go on forever being taunted by the mouse he can never quite catch however, we may find in our own lives there is a limit to how much humiliation we can endure at the hands of perpetual defeat. For this reason it may even become preferable after a certain period of time to begin pursuing abstract ideals instead of tangible successes, since our ideals, unlike what is fully actual, can never inform anyone of the fact that we have yet to possess them. Despite this we may still take great pride in tangible successes when they do happen to come our way, since after all, it is always preferable to have a symbol or objective testament to ones achievements than none whatsoever. But if we do place value on our symbolic achievements, such value is surely misplaced when we properly understand the nature of striving: A trophy does not tell us anything about the struggle to victory, a certificate says nothing of the hard work we endured in order to attain it. We are in other words, always sold short by anything less than a full biography of our blood, sweat, and tears that it took in order to attain victory, and always deluded in thinking that a prize could ever serve this function by proxy. This does not by extension however, mean that trophies and cups have no worth at all: Trophies and cups will always be valuable in as much as they carry the ability to promote further struggles and ambitions. It simply means that the only prizes that are valuable are those which are not on our shelf, and are not presently hanging on our wall, since only those have the capacity to make us strive for them.

The art of perfection then is the ongoing pursuit of what we do not have, rather than the veneration of what we already do. To go against this rule and convince ourselves that we have already attained perfection or that we are just in the process of doing so, would be to misunderstand the very artfulness in the 'art' of perfection - for all great works of art are works in progress and all great masterpieces a dim reflection of what the artist originally conceived. Pursuing perfection in other words, does not mean creating some unsurpassed and therefore perfect, but creating the foundation for ever more creative work and thus ever more reason to live. Where the true artist does 'aim' for perfection in practice, we may in fact observe that he or she does so only as a means of acquiring his actual target of progressive fulfillment - no more expecting to attain perfection itself than a fisherman who aims for the horizon expects to catch the horizon on the end of his hook, or the marksman who aims his bullet at his cross-hairs expects to shoot his cross-hairs straight out of his scope. If we can somehow learn to embody this same skillful distinction between our ideals and the actual targets they helpfully guide us towards, we can perhaps now strive for our 'perfect loaf of bread' our 'perfect family' or 'perfect work of art' in the same sense Eisner strove to create his 'perfect line': Not in the belief that our ideals are attainable, but that our ideals are worth pursing precisely because we can never quite attain them. And if we have understood why our ideals are so much more useful when we do not have them, it should be clear why this is the perfect reason to be thankful.