If There’s a Solution, Why Worry? Here’s What That Actually Means

“If a problem can be solved, what reason is there to be upset? If there is no possible solution, what use is there in being sad?” — Shantideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life

That’s how Shantideva said it, but the version that I have always heard goes more like this: if there’s a problem and there’s a solution, what’s the problem, and if there’s a problem and there’s no solution, what’s the problem?

When I think about it, it sounds like something a wise person would say, handing us two easy options, but it’s definitely not as simple as it sounds. I don’t interpret it as telling us to stop worrying, but as forcing us to sort our problems into two piles, the ones we can act on and the ones we can’t. Once we know which pile the problem’s in, we know what to do with it. If it’s fixable, that worry needs to turn into work. If it’s not, there’s nothing useful to do with it but let it go.

We default to worry anyway because it feels like doing something. Sitting there running the problem over and over in our heads feels like effort, even progress, when really it’s just motion without movement. For the fixable ones, worry just delays the work we already know we need to do. For the unfixable ones, worry is us holding onto something that’s already slipped out of our hands, and no amount of holding on brings it back.

Truth is, knowing which pile a problem belongs to doesn’t make the fixing simple or the letting go painless, but it does give us a place to put our energy instead of burning it on nothing.

So where does that leave us? What problem is actually consuming us right now, and which pile does it belong in?

#MotivationMonday