What Can You Do When There Is No Solution?
From a young age, we are taught about the world using pairs of opposites. Heaven and hell, war and peace, cops and robbers, love and hate, etc. Creating pairs of opposites is a digestible and quick way to explain the world because it simplifies reality and reduces it to manageable bite-size pieces. It’s a shortcut we take to fit something that we may not fully understand into our personal models of the world, but it bypasses things like nuance, complexity, and, sometimes, truth. Viewing the world in this way, through polarity, can also push us towards binary frameworks like ‘us/them’ and ‘problem/solution’.?
To be clear, there is certainly a place for binary frameworks. Many things benefit from a polarized perspective that can produce quick, clear, and simple action. Things like weight loss, firing an employee for cause, or defending your country against a ground invasion come to mind. But if we think exclusively in this polarized way, we can become hamstrung when confronted with challenges that contain multiple opposing forces and no ‘problem/solution’-style answer.?
For example, parents of teenagers want to encourage independence. They want their kids to become self-reliant so they can leave the house one day and have their own lives.? But parents also want to keep their teenagers safe and out of harm’s way, they want to protect them from the threats out in the world and from the consequences of their own bad decisions. In this context, a problem/solution framework is no help. Because the problem isn’t exactly a problem. It's a paradox.??
Psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author, Esther Perel says “Most of life’s challenges are not problems to be solved but instead paradoxes to be managed.” I’m not sure if she was the first to say this, but I heard it from her so I’ll give her the credit. Esther offers us an alternative lens through which to view the world. One that encourages complexity and nuance. If we approach a complex challenge as a paradox to manage, we are beginning with the assumption that there isn’t a perfect solution. This helps us sidestep polarized frameworks like problem/solution, and enter a space where we can sit at the nexus of multiple opposing forces without feeling the need to satisfy each one.
A very simple example of this comes from my favorite Mythbuster, Adam Savage. He identifies the paradox of clutter as one he is constantly working to manage: he desires clean and orderly spaces, but the law of entropy has other plans. To manage this paradox, Adam has adopted a habit of never going anywhere empty-handed. He says that there is always something where you are that belongs somewhere you’re going to be. So when he gets up to leave a room, or the house, or the car, he finds something that belongs where he is going and he takes it with him.? Thus, never go anywhere empty-handed. Adam is managing a paradox with this habit. He will never beat entropy, and that isn’t his goal. His goal is simply to manage the paradox to within what he deems an acceptable level.
Our lives are full of paradoxes:?
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This list could go on indefinitely. Paradoxes like these are the source of much anguish and suffering and they are made worse when viewed through the problem/solution lens that we have been trained to use. But if we can view paradoxes as things to manage we can alleviate some of our suffering. This means breaking out of polarized frameworks that pit us in opposition to something, and it requires accepting opposite and irreconcilable differences. It means making space for opposites to coexist.?
Critically, the approach of paradox management shifts the focus from binary problem solving to something more like ‘value-informed navigation’. When we are confronted with a paradox we don’t have to abandon our values, in fact, we must use them to navigate our way through inherent contradictions.?
Parents value both fostering independence and promoting safety, so they might use those values to navigate their way to a place that balances the contradictions best. That could look like setting a curfew, or requiring that their teen share their location on their phone, etc. Of course, there are ways around these value-driven constraints, but such is the nature of a paradox. It’s never going to be perfectly balanced.
When we’ve reached the outer limits of ‘problem/solution’-style thinking we have to adopt a new framework.?
Our focus should shift from resolution and reconciliation to value-based navigation of inherent contradiction.??
What we can’t solve, we must manage.?