We Are Making our Own Problems
I remember few years ago looking at some pictures of dead bodies of people who are victims of suicide and most of them are young people who are supposed to have just started in life, having less responsibilities, less pressures, and less problems. But how on earth they ended up killing themselves? It would be more sobering if one of your friends and family members committed suicide because of apparently insurmountable problems. Few weeks ago, there was news of a female OFW who came from Taiwan who has committed suicide in a hotel in the Philippines presumable because of depression. Too many questions have lingered in her mind before taking her life away. “What shall I do?”, “What would happen to my kinds and to my family in this times?”, “What would happen to me?” . And with the kind of circumstances she’s in; alienating, sad and impersonal, she found herself at the death’s door. Moments like these like this are unavoidable, but how I wish I will never encounter these dark chapters in my life. Death may be common, but it’s a tragic end of someone. It is the ultimate end of a person you love, the person you hate, the person you have awkward moments with and the person whom you’ve never touched before. Imagining seeing the dead body of your loved one being laid in a cold metallic slab gives you the appreciation how fragile life is, how life would have been amazing if we did something just to prevent somebody tempted to slit their wrists or hang on a ceiling using their neck and rope. Life’s problems are generally solvable and I wanted to become a skilled problem – solver because the truth is I like these problems to be gone. That’s why I aspired to be a problem – solver and be the best I could imagine. Whenever I heard someone had attempted suicide, I imagine myself how would I deal with the problem when I am in her/his shoes. Most of the time, I ended up sympathizing the victim because the way the card they had dealt with; they were given the losing cards. Whenever would I try to solve a life problem in the future, I always do it with the loved ones in mind and, perhaps, it might be much more inspiring if your crush thought about you. Popping yourself in someone else’s mind is an honor.
We shouldn’t take our lives just to escape life’s difficulties, although back in my mind we’re just life’s happy victims, because those difficulties were generally solvable. Problems become unsurmountable because most of the time, we’re the ones who make life difficult for ourselves and for the others in the form of wrong decisions, well thought – off intentions that backfire or poorly – understood judgements that render participants acting on their own without regards from others. What is worse is we see the accumulated fruits of what we sow years after living with the decisions you made, seeing that you may have chosen the wrong decision and weep or serendipitously conquer the problem like a miracle. Sometimes, to make something right, you have to ask forgiveness from the offended party to an ultimate peace. Fortunately, many of life’s difficulties were straightforward and doesn’t require intensive intelligence to understood it. Like the disease that would stricken your loves ones and that sucks or a marriage that have ended and that’s heartbreaking. Many people have experienced these life’s difficulties with mixed results. Let’s take marriage for example. Marriage is a union of a man and a woman, ordained by the laws of God and man. After the high school has ended, ninety percent of your classmates would go on having a romantic relationship in their twenties and those that are in romantic relationships that do end in marriage, there is fifty percent chance that you and your spouse will break the marriage, file a legal separation, and turn their lives on separate ways. As the American comedian Bill Burr surmised, if you have a parachute that have a seventy – five percent chance of not working, why would we use that parachute? The same thing is in marriage. If you have more than seventy – five percent chance of NOT having a happy married life, why should people get married at all? How does someone solve the disappointing odds and emotionally – risky marriages so that we can enjoy the marriage until we expire? Small false starts are quite tolerable but when big life decisions would come like marriage or changing careers, one must think it through because you can only see the effects after living through your decisions. Then you get to decide whether your choices were correct. Oftentimes, your wrong decisions you took on certain situations might be seemed correct on some people facing a similar situation. Solutions worked on them but they didn’t work on you.
We are making our own problems and shooting ourselves on our own foot. We have problems on ourselves and other people inadvertently created some problems for us, either directly or indirectly. Ever noticed that most of the problems we encountered are man – made? Problems at work. Problems in the family. Sickness. Laziness of other people. Wrong decisions chosen by our loved ones and friends. Our flaws and your flaws. Rarely do situations themselves create problems because no matter how you see it, there is a hint of human error lingering in those moments. We are just making other people suffer and become problematic in life because on the outside, we are impersonal to each other. We’re too rigid to give something to the needy in fear that they will grow dependent on mendicancy. Just give them some food anyway. Some people themselves are problematic. Just serve them anyway. Some people don’t deserve to be forgiven. Just forgive them anyway. If your enemy told you to go a mile with him, go with him for two miles said the Bible. Who knows… this enemy might be your “forever”.
Although it might be unrealistic that we can solve any problem by being a problem – solver (because you’re just rationalizing how bad you are at facing problems and making yourself feel good), having some inkling on how to solve the problems in our minds is the first step to tumble the walls surrounding the problems. Have some humility that you may not be able to solve it, but at least you put up a good fight with the enemy (but always come back with a bang if you’re ready again) and you don’t have to solve other people’s problems as a requirement in winning them over. You have your own personal fight and please bear in mind that you have to be kind to others; we don’t know what they’re battling with. Just solve problems and challenge yourself so you may become, as most products would proclaim, new and improved.
On the other hand, just imagine if these problems become people. These people become the embodiment of the problems you encounter. How do you approach them? Do you chat to him/her? While looking at this person, are you determined to solve the problems to conquer him/her? Do you sow hate when looking at him/her? If you noticed that you disliked that person whenever you see him/her, would you avoid that problem and leave? And the last question is…do you feel an intimate affinity to that person when you see him/her? If that’s the case, that problem is worth solving for.
In the game “kasing” (loosely translates to spinning top game), my favorite spinning top to use in that game is the golf ball spinning tops because they are almost impervious to damage from other toy tops (because the enemy spinning top couldn’t make a hole if it hit a golf ball top) and they still spin even if they bump on walls many times. We need to be like golf ball tops. Even if we bump into many problems many times, we are still spinning and ready to play (and solve) again.
Are you ready to solve some problems?