It intrigues me to no end how we human beings think about things. Take solving problems, for instance. In the West, we think of problems as discrete events. We ‘solve’ each one and then move on to the next, almost like we are climbing a set of stairs as we move into the future. I’ve learned in my recent studies of China that dealing with problems is seen in their culture as a never-ending process. Problems are never solved, since every ‘solution’ opens the door to another problem or problems.
In both of these worldviews, problems exist ‘in reality’ independent of us. All we can do is react—or at best respond—and attempt to deal with our problems by exerting some degree of control on our circumstances.
In a real-time world, we can have a different way of relating to reality. When life is happening faster and faster and our circumstances are constantly changing, the idea of a ‘problem’ as a special class of circumstances dissolves.
There are no problems in reality. As Shakespeare pointed out, “There is nothing either good or bad, but [our] thinking makes it so.”
All our circumstances are simply what is happening.
