Posted by
BECOLBY on Saturday, May 02, 2009 11:50:21 PM
“There is an answer to every problem, and a problem to every answer.”
I have lived my life by this little idiom for many decades now. It is simple sounding but when understood, it could be viewed as profound.
I take authorship of this as I have said it for more than 30 years and even today when I google it, I find no references. Since it is my own little idiom, I will explain exactly what I mean.
At first this seems like a palindrome. By my meaning behind the words, it is circular in scope, not linear.
There is an answer to every problem.
I think that all of us realize that every predicament we have ever found ourselves in there are obvious answers that come to mind. Of course these answers are often extreme and not agreeable answers but answers none the less. Take for example when you were young and a bully started to pick on you. What can you do? The accepted dilemma is that if you tell an adult the bully will makes things worse and if you do nothing the bullying will continue.
Of course you could always get a gun and shoot the bully, ending the torment.
This is by far not the best answer and for most not even acceptable, but it is an answer none the less. This is what I mean by there is an answer to every problem. Every situation has answers. Never let yourself feel that you are in a situation that can not be gotten out of. There is always an answer. Life is about finding the one with the least consequences.
And that my friends segues us to the second part of the idiom,
And a problem to every answer.
By this I mean that the answers to any problem have consequences or its own problems. Using the bully situation, shooting the bully will likely have dire consequences so that particular answer will not be an acceptable one for the majority of us. It does not detract from the fact that it is an answer. Killing ones self is also an answer to the above situation, but again one with dire consequences. Every answer will generally involve the creation of other problems and each of those problems will have answers, each of which will create new problems.
So now do you see what I am eluding too? I feel life is a series of problems that offer a variety of answers, each of which will create more problems. The goal in life is to pick the answers that create fewer and milder problems than the one being addressed.