Last week I went into the problems you want to have. I dug a bit deeper into the other sorts of problems I have or people come to me with. There is a general framework I didn’t realise I was using until I tried to work out how I’d explain it. That’s what we’ll go into today.
Back on the Zen train again. A guideline is that happy and grateful people don’t complain. At least not in a way that they hold personal annoyance about it.
(Pointing out difficulties and relating to other humans is natural, but things shouldn’t get you down)
So when you or someone is complaining it’s an indicator.
For the sake of simplicity, there are three main buckets of the types of problems you experience and how to react to them.
Problems you want to have - Celebrate them
Problems you can do nothing about - Accept them
Problems you don’t want to have - Remove them
1 - Problems you want to have
As covered last week. These are problems that you only have because they are integrally related to positive situations in your life. You can consider them a cost of this good thing.
You would never want to remove the good thing, so any associated grievances can also be celebrated as a total win.
2 - Problems you can do nothing about
These are things like the laws of nature and stuff wildly beyond your control. Usually stuff you’re born with or can do nothing about:
Ageing, recessions, disabilities, the weather, your family, taxes, previous mistakes.
These are things that it is basically our duty to accept as it is as quickly as possible. It is not worth wasting any of our short time on this earth fretting about them.
If you think of life as a game these are just the rules in the game you have to work with. Accepting the confinements of these rules (however unfair they are) and playing with the cards you have will make the experience of your life much better.
Dwelling on something you can’t change isn’t going to make your life any better. It’s just going to create the mindset that you won’t achieve happiness until you have something you are never going to have.
Thus, you are making your life worse wanting something that isn’t possible.
“Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.” -Nikos Kazantzakis
3 - Problems you don’t want to have
Lastly, we have ‘problems that you don’t want to have’.
These are things that are annoying and changeable, so we need to change them. This doesn’t sound like a true Zen Buddhist approach where you make zero judgements and accept everything with peace.
Personally, I think the laws of nature and human existence has some stuff that it is highly impractical to fight when it comes to happiness.
Humans are social creatures and we have natural passions. Reflecting on our situation and putting ourselves in situations where it is more natural to be happy is a much better approach than trying to enjoy something we aren’t built to enjoy.
You can’t fight nature
For example, I’m a mostly heterosexual guy. Life would be great if I was attracted to men because then there are double the amount of people who can give me pleasure. Sadly it’s not something I can just switch on (I tried) and it is what it is. There is a reason we legalised homosexuality, people have a right to what makes them happy and doesn’t harm others.
There are general rules with how our minds work we have to accept as part of the game of life mentioned above. Definitely be open-minded to try things you find difficult to enjoy such as pineapple on pizza or spending more time on your own. You can be surprised what rules are changeable and might be unhealthy ‘fixed-mindsets’.
Before this becomes a massive tangent I’ll get back on point.
Problems we don’t want and appropriate responses
There are millions of things that we can change in our lives which can lead to more happiness.
What to do about them depends on their cause and priority.
Major problems
There are a few core things that come from our root nature that deserve some radical response.
Community and purpose are existential things that we need to get right.
Who do I spend time with? (and how do they nurture me?)
What do I spend time doing? (and what’s the point of it?)
Getting these wrong leads to mid-life crises because living with them becomes too much.
To get it right, consider changing where you live, your partner, which friendships you focus on, your career and your hobbies. These are the highest impact decisions you can make and are worth some major life upheaval to sort out.
These are interlinked; so your hobbies will depend on where you are and who your friends are. Equally who your friends are will change based on your hobbies.
Millennial problems
Having too many interests and desires is an issue.
Wanting to be good at a million things, have a social life, a good career, use social media, read newsletters and books, watch Youtube, be up to speed on news, the economy, and politics and do yoga, running, painting and so on.
Any one of these interests is fine, but embracing all of them every week means we inevitably let ourselves and others down by committing to too many things. It’s hard to prioritise and things which easily take up our attention (social media..) get more of us than other things we’d like to put more time into.
Often our complaints and annoyances can be solved with some prioritisation and minimalism.
Deciding the few things that are really worth our focus and cutting/limiting the others to give ourselves more of the things that are important is a massive act of self-love.
Instead of complaining about not doing yoga again this week, we realise this is a ‘problem we want to have’ because we have chosen to focus on our writing etc... This is a cost we are willing to pay to do the important thing to us and can shut up and be happy.
If it turns out we’re missing yoga because we spent too long on social media then it’s time to cut that or accept that our priorities aren’t what we think they are.
The issue of too many desires has become defining of millennials - to be honest, these affect people of any age and in any era of humanity. We just happen to be especially overwhelmed with choice and the mindset that we can have all these things... A grand topic for another time.
Small problems
There are lots of smaller problems that on the surface aren’t the major life change problems or the ‘millennial’ problems.
These are worth scrutinising to see if they are classified correctly.
e.g. My boss has bad breath —> Well do you like your job?
I hate my job
Maybe you need to completely change career or at least employer. So no point focussing on the boss breath issue, this doesn’t matter as there is a much bigger action required.
I friggin love my job
Well perhaps you can talk to them about it and if you aren’t prepared to do that then you have to accept it as a cost of achieving the thing you like so much so this is a ‘problem you want to have’ after all.
Essentially, you want to question the complaint and how important it is. If you struggle to find a way to accept it then it possibly fits into something bigger or you need to take action.
Changes to what we enjoy
There are some blurry lines between the problems you do or don’t want to have as your life changes.
Experiences that used to be a total win for you and worth the sacrifice may no longer be the same. For example:
Travel
Younger people tend to enjoy travelling a lot and are happier sleeping in hostels and packing all their worldly belongings into a backpack every few days to be able to go and see something new.
After a while, all these new things are less interesting and the sacrifices you make become a higher cost compared to the reward.
Things like back pain, food poisoning and 30-hour bus journeys become something we can only complain about without any gratitude for the ability to see yet another new thing.
This is change and all part of the beautiful experience of being a human. All we can do is remain open-minded to questioning our feelings and learn to go with the flow.
Conclusion
Complaints are a brilliant tool to reflect on. You shouldn’t “never complain”. You basically shouldn’t complain more than once or without being mindful of why.
As mentioned a zen state allows the privilege of breezing through situations without whining. So if we are making a complaint about something we need to check in on why.
Where does it fall into these categories?
Is it a sign of a good thing in my life?
Reframe it.
Is it something that I really can’t change at all?
Accept it.
Am I just relating to someone else for fun but I’m not depressed at all about it
Okay but don’t overdo it
Is it something I can change?
If it’s important, fix it.
If something was a ‘problem you want to have’ but you keep on complaining, then maybe it’s a sign this isn’t such a priority.
It’s a sign that you maybe have bigger problems or might have too many things on or are just changing tastes.
I’ll leave you with this.
“Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.” Sydney J. Harris