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TRY DISCONNECTING
Monday May 8, 2017
Tuning out, zoning-out, checking out – for minutes, or a few hours (some people try this for days on end – which used to be called NORMAL), try substituting fresh air for keyboarding, conversation for texting, laughter for debate and love for hate. Feels like time travel.
There is an answer, likely a correct answer, for every problem we’ve ever had. When we seek that correct answer, isn’t the process of finding the answer as important as finding the answer? Not just so we can prove to a teacher who we solved the algebra problem, but so we can test our own mind to deal with humanity – first our own humanness, and then the complexities of others. If we have value, that’s where we’ll find it. If we don’t, that’s where we’ll learn it.
Solution to any given problem might be far away, in distance or time, or might be within reach – close to home, at home, or inside our curious brain. So, where to look for answers, for solutions, for ideas worth trying?
Read books, point-click your way to shortcut answers – in part because we tend to believe problems are which, ‘surely, someone solved this already’, we don’t want to invest time for understanding the problem and the solution, we just want a quick fix …
Most problems aren’t rocket-surgery because we are likely not curing diseases or exploring galaxies – but rather exploring human chemistry, why people go ballistic, exploring home-economics, life and style and hopes and dreams and beliefs – and all their opposites. Whatever our combination of troubles or challenges, we are each unique snowflakes – taking different approaches, finding solution which might work vs. others we perceive to play out differently in our lives.
Why?
We don’t see this problem, or its solution, through plain panes of objective viewing – but see it from where we are, as we are, looking through wrong end of some telescope in search of some microbe-level ingredient which, if tweaked, will cure our problem du jour. We expect this of surgeons, we expect it of rocket scientists, expect it of google, but not of ordinary people. Our magic – our value in life is not in talking about what we know, but in asking what we don’t know.
Reader feedback:
DEFINING MY PROBLEM
Short, sweet and to the point. Words to live by. Thanks for sharing on a Sunday morning, DAB, Edmonton, AB
Your column about eating describes my circumstances exactly. I too, am going to make a sign for my refrigerator, WF, Valleyview, AB
So true Mark- As I finish a big meal in Puerto Vallarta all inclusive (too much food and drink). Will be more conscious tonight and tomorrow, SM, Calgary, AB
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