how to look at problems?
our perspective to look at problems can either help us solve them quicker or make them even more difficult
i was sitting in the park the other evening. the sun was slowly folding itself into the horizon, leaving behind streaks of orange and purple that looked almost unreal, as if the sky had been painted by someone with too much time and too much sorrow. the air carried the faint smell of grass, damp from the day’s heat, and the occasional laughter of children in the distance felt like echoes from a life I was no longer part of.
inside me, there was hollowness. like a room that has been emptied of furniture but still carries the smell of what once was. i was angry. angry at someone who mattered to me, and in my anger, i had acted recklessly. i had cut off words, silenced myself, convinced that this silence was power. but now, sitting alone, I wasn’t so sure anymore.
have you ever noticed how silence can sometimes make more sense than the noise of our thoughts? in my case this bench in the park and the silence that surrounded me showed me what i was refusing to see.
and i began to see the actual problem seriously. until then, i had been staring at it with hostility, feeding it with my resentment. and like a shadow, the more i looked, the bigger it became. every path forward looked blocked, every solution looked doomed. but what if the problem itself wasn’t the enemy? what if the way i looked at it was the real weight on my chest?
the thought surprised me. problems are strange creatures. they wear the mask you put on them. look at them with despair, and they grow monstrous. look at them with curiosity, and they begin to reveal their openings.
isn’t it odd that the same situation can feel like an unsolvable curse one moment, and a simple challenge the next, all depending on the angle from which you choose to see it?
i thought of the person i had hurt with my silence. my first lens was anger, and through it, i saw betrayal and disappointment. but when i shifted it slightly, even for a second, i saw something else… fear, maybe, or a need for understanding. the problem hadn’t changed. only my perspective had.
and once i realized that, i felt as if the walls I had built in my mind suddenly revealed small cracks where light could come through.
isn’t it strange how often we confuse anger with clarity? we think we see everything clearly in the heat of the moment, but in truth, we see less.
in relationships, this blindness is common. a friend doesn’t return your call. a partner forgets something important. a parent criticizes instead of supporting. our first instinct is to place these small events under the harshest spotlight and interpret them as rejection, betrayal, or indifference. but we should look at these things with a different perspective. instead of asking, “why are they doing this to me?” we should ask ourselves, “what might they be going through that I cannot see?”
so many quarrels could dissolve if we dared to step out of ourselves for a moment. not every silence is abandonment. Not every criticism is cruelty. sometimes, silence hides exhaustion. sometimes, criticism hides fear. and if we look at it differently, we begin to notice that problems in relationships are rarely walls but are like doors waiting to be opened.
at work, the same lens-shift matters. you might feel the deadline is heavy, the tasks are endless, the boss is demanding. your mind says, “this is too much. i just… cannot.” suddenly, the work itself is no longer just work, it becomes a mountain designed to crush you. but look at it a different way. what if this is an opportunity? What if it’s a test not of your capacity, but of your resourcefulness?
i remember once reading about thomas edison. for every invention that worked, there were thousands that failed. he did not call them failures. He called them ways that didn’t work. that shift in perspective allowed him to continue, to keep solving. problems, seen rightly, can turn into training grounds. work pressure can be practice for resilience. conflict can be practice for patience. isn’t it remarkable how the same situation can either break you or shape you depending only on the way you hold it in your mind?
and then there’s personal life where we wrestle with ourselves. here, the most dangerous problems are the ones no one else can see like the loneliness, the doubts, the quiet sense of not being enough. these are shadows that grow longer when we stare at them with despair. but if we look at them differently, they become signals rather than punishments. loneliness can be an invitation to understand yourself. doubt can be a doorway to growth.
there’s a japanese art of kintsugi. it’s the practice of repairing broken pottery with gold. the cracks are not hidden, they are highlighted and made beautiful. we should treat our personal struggles the same way. instead of seeing them as proof of our weakness, we should see them as places where strength can be poured?
so, here’s the thought that stayed with me that evening in the park, problems are not solid things. they are liquid. they take the shape of the container we place them in. if our container is fear, they become overwhelming. if our container is curiosity, they become manageable. and if our container is compassion towards ourselves, towards others, they sometimes stop being problems at all.
have you noticed this in your own life? how the same event can be unbearable one day and almost trivial the next? the event didn’t change. you did.
as the last trace of light faded and the park fell into that bluish quiet that comes after sunset, i felt a kind of relief. the silence inside me wasn’t emptiness anymore. It was space that gave me new perspective to look at problems differently, to shift them around, to see them not as enemies but as teachers.
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