When The Solution Is The Problem

 “They say that one night, a man on his way home found his neighbor under a lamppost as if he were looking for something he had lost.

“What’s wrong with you?” Asked the newcomer.

“I have lost the key to my house and I cannot enter,” he answered.

-I’ll help you find it.

After searching conscientiously around the lamppost, the newcomer asked his neighbor:

-Are you sure you’ve lost the key here?

-No, I lost the key there- he answered pointing towards a dark corner of the street.

-And what are you doing looking for her under the lamppost?

-There is more light here. “

Sometimes we try the same solution over and over, even when it doesn’t work for us. Wouldn’t it be better to choose to do something different?

Ineffective solutions

“We first raised the dust and then we complained about not being able to see ” (Berkeley)

Often times, life presents us with challenges, difficulties or problems to which we respond by implementing various strategies. Many of these solutions are out of date for the present situation, either because they have been woven from inertia or because they conform old patterns that were effective in similar situations in the past. But sometimes, the principle of “ more of the same ” does not “surprisingly” produce the desired change, but on the contrary, the solution is the problem.

For example, when faced with a communication problem, we press to speak to the other as a way of solving, achieving with this attitude that our interlocutor is more uncomfortable and with less desire to speak. Or if we have difficulty sleeping, we try to force ourselves to do so through an act of will, which will only make us more awake. Or we set unattainable goals in an ideal future, which will only confirm our belief that “we will not be able to.”

Thus, we are building, oblivious to it, a vicious circle that is maintained and fed back thanks to what we consider to be the solution. Without realizing that if we interrupted it, if we cut that systematic repetition, it would probably show the resolution of the difficult situation before our eyes. But it is our eagerness and persistence to make the unpleasant disappear that in most situations sustains and fuels the difficulty.

Thus, in certain circumstances, problems can arise as a result of a mistaken attempt to change an existing difficulty. The attempt to make a change in the situation either contributes to accentuating the problem or constitutes the problem itself, as is the case of the man who tried to find the key under the lamppost because there was light. His attempt at a solution was ineffective, but it persisted over and over again, as if his problem were going to be solved by magic. When it would be more appropriate to change strategy.

Life and its challenges sometimes demand our attention and sometimes suggest the opposite of what we think, asking us for serenity, slowness and attention in our observations and choices, that we breathe before acting, familiarizing ourselves with the situation, the sensations and thoughts, to allow precise actions to emerge from within.