Problem-Solving

¡Hola! Everybody...
People: you may not realize it, but we’re in the midst of a huge historical transition. We have a president who’s doing his best to get his message out. Whether you agree with him or not, you should be paying attention. Fuck American Idol! Part of the reason you’re getting fucked without the consideration of a kiss is that you’re amusing yourself to death. We as a people have become the laughing stock of the world and with good reason... Best line of the night was Obama’s response to the reporter’s insistent question of why he waited two days to express outrage at the AIG bonuses: “Because I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak, that’s why... ” Want a ghetto translation? Nigga Please! LOL!

In case you haven’t heard there’s a woman here in NYC who was married to a gazillionaire 30 years her senior. She signed a post-nuptial agreement that left her something like $48 million! She’s changed her mind because she claims she can’t live on anything less than $53 thousand a week (click here for a breakdown of her budget). She ain’t even that fine (she has that pallid constipated look most women who consciously starve themselves sport). I guess that poosie was good, I dunno. OTOH, she should be entitled half of the man’s net worth and she’s only asking for a third (he’s worth over $300 million).

Sometimes I’ll read something I wrote several years ago and I wonder who wrote it. LOL... (repost)

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-=[ Problems ]=-

“Test pilots have a litmus test for evaluating problems. When something goes wrong, they ask, ‘Is this thing still flying?’ If the answer is yes, then there's no immediate danger, no need to overreact.”

-- Alan L. Bean(1932 – ) US Astronaut, Apollo 12 Moon-walk mission

The Wonderful World of Problems! LOL!

Stop to think about it: how would you feel, who would your friends be, how would you live, dress, walk, or speak if you had no problems? How at peace with yourself would you be if you had no bills, or hadn’t been sexually abused, beaten by your drunk of a father, or had a different job? How would you feel without hate for a parent, or with a different boss, or girl/ boyfriend, or engaged in a satisfying romantic relationship?

How would you act without your problems?

Yesterday’s responses to the set of “who’s responsible” questions I posted are the self created road blocks we habitually identify as problems. Along with everything in our lives, we perceive our problems to be the result of fate -- therefore impossible to change. However, as much as we anguish over our problems, the truth is, no matter how much better we think we would be without them, the idea of liberating yourself from your problems is terrifying. Sounds crazy, huh? But no: problems give us our identity.

I remember becoming deeply upset when someone said that there are no such things as problems, only our attitudes towards living. It was one of the few times of my life I can remember possessing a sincere desire to kill. I am exaggerating, but I think you can identify. There I was, my world was collapsing around me, I’ve barely had my recovery by the skin of my teeth, and this asshole was telling me there are no problems in life?! Looking back now, the fact of the matter was that my collapsing world was my life. It was all I knew. It was my identity.

We think we are our problems. In other words, we think our problems are a part of who we are. Well, they’re not, and that’s why I began with the “who’s responsible” questions, so that we could see that all those hurts, blames, and regrets are what we think we are (or what we think we have to be), when in truth they’re nothing more than our own limited thinking born from a false belief system and thought constellation. Our problems are how we create our identity, the image we present to the outside world.

(Now please! Do not try to over simplify what I am saying by pointing to the suffering in the Gulf area and laying the blame solely on the victims of what is a horrifying nightmare come true. Some “problems” are more intense that others. My point is – how do WE become fixated on the problem and not the solution!)

Having problems is a chronic habit. Limited thinking is a habit and as addictive as any food or drug. Like alcohol, or bingeing, we give our problems priority in our lives. We live by them. We are them. In addition, we create them with the same consistency as an assembly line to give us the identity we think we need to have.

Limited, or faulty, thinking in any sense is not good for our happiness, except in the sense that we glorify our manufactured identity: the who of what we think we are. Let’s say, for example, you’re sacrificing your life for your child, that’s limited thinking (limited in the sense that it’s like a frozen thinking: there are no options in frozen thinking). This is also a manufactured identity: “suffering parent, that’s me!” Another example: you can’t get ahead in life because of your lack of education, another limited and manufactured identity. Or, here’s a popular one: you only attract jerks for lovers -- also a limited and manufactured identity.

Problems become real because we doubt our true selves. We believe in the myth of ourselves as limited and without power when in actuality we are walking miracles endowed with a divine spark. Simply put, because we have no faith in our true selves, we have created “identity shells.” Out of feelings of worthlessness, or fear, we create identities -- personas -- to bring meaning to a life without apparent purpose, a life with out a true understanding of its own reality. Problems, folks, give us that purpose. Problems create for us our own imagined reality.

Just look at how we live with problems. They consume our thoughts. We plan around them, and for them. We talk incessantly about them, go to shrinks over them, and spend a huge portion of our lives totally obsessed by them.

What would we be without our problems?

Our problems are so dear to us that in the unlikely event one might get solved, instead of being grateful, we run right out and find another one, right now! “Hey! It’s my problem, and while it may bring me pain, it’s the only existence I know and it’s better than the unknown,” someone might say.

Living life at the mercy of our problems is living life as a victim.

Love,

Eddie