In a passage I read, about “calming the mind,” a statement said: “Every problem has a solution.”
I thought about that long and hard. And. I’m wondering if that is true.
There are a lot of things in this world that I will never know the answer to. Now, that is not to say that an answer doesn’t exist. In many cases it does. I’m just not smart enough to figure it out.
A good example might be considering four-dimensional space. The world as we know it is three dimensional. But hard as I try, I cannot seem to understand the explanations about adding in that fourth dimension. In physics, the spacetime mathematical model adding time as the fourth extension is complicated, in my mind. I understand the premise but not the actual workings.
I won’t go down that hole right now. But there are problems I am simply not smart enough to understand, let alone solve.
When I consider my immediate world, the one in my everyday life, I feel very fortunate. However you want to say it — blessed, lucky, fortunate. My life has been filled with goodness. And most days, there are not any problems of great consequence. I always have food and shelter. My health is relatively good. I have clothing, transportation, resources, money. And most importantly, there are people (and animals) I love and those who love me.
Most days, my biggest problems seem to come from the news of the world around me. Policies that are being made or destroyed by our government. Abuses of human rights. Offenses against the planet and the environment. Hatred among people in our world, not to mention in our own town.
These seem like pretty enormous problems, ones that we all bear witness to every day. Yet, I can’t readily solve any of them. In fact, the most I can do in most situations is to wait. Vote in November, we say. But even that brings no assurances. And certainly no solution to things like the extreme hatred that hangs in the air like a dense fog.
The article I read, the one I talked about at the beginning, said the solution was to realize that there are answers to every problem, and only a calm mind will be capable of finding them.
I tend to disagree with this bit of self-help. It is the problem in the first place that is making my mind a big hot mess.
I think, from this, I’ve come to see that there really aren’t answers to everything. There are numerous problems in this world around us. In most cases, I can’t even see what a solution might be.
Instead, though, I can focus on the things I can see. There is a lot of goodness in the world too. It isn’t all just one big knotted mess. There are good people, good animals, good nature, food, sights, sounds, good deeds, good coincidences, brown paper packages tied up with string, and kittens with whiskers, for crying out loud.
I hope, through making continued and concerted efforts to focus on the good things in life, I will somehow generate good energy. Which, I also hope, will extend outward. Not like ripples in a pond, but more like those videos that show people sneezing and how far it goes. Or those shots of the flushing toilets, spraying the spray everywhere. But instead of microorganisms swirling about, I’ll be spreading love and virtue and kindness. It may not solve the problems, but it might make the world a better place.
Ah. Choo.
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“The best way out is always through.”
― Robert Frost
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“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
― Bertrand Russell
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“Every solution to every problem is simple. It’s the distance between the two where the mystery lies.”
― Derek Landy, Skulduggery Pleasant
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