Why “Having No Problems” May Be A Problem

The world is filled with differing ideas, people, living conditions and natural phenomena. This widespread diversity is put here for us to use and learn. So, while problems aren’t necessarily fun, they’re indispensable for our learning curve from birth to death.

When are no problems a problem? See if you don’t recognize these situations:

You refuse to confront a problem presented to you. Emily doted on her son, Cliff.

He was popular in school, good at sports and with decent grades.

However, he was overcompetitive and a bully to those who were “marginal” students — disabled, from a different religious background, less wealthy than most of the people he knew.

He harassed the girls in school with sexual innuendo.

Because he was the head of the jock clique, he had support from his peers whenever he was called into the principal’s office for his behavior.

Emily always had to retrieve Cliff after each of these offenses.

However, instead of taking her son to task and teaching him compassion and the notion of equality, Emily made excuses. “They’re just jealous, honey,” she would explain. “They’ll never be as good as you are. Just ignore them.”

Emily believed that each incident was caused by the targeted child, and felt SHE was kind and understanding for not retaliating.

Time after time, Emily refused to deal with these problems, other than to reassure herself that her son was not at fault.

As a result, Cliff learned no boundaries. His lack of understanding destroyed his freshman year at college, where he had no immunity from his actions. His egregious behavior, excused in high school, got him expelled from college after the third offense.

When he returned home, Emily was completely bewildered. How had this gotten so out of hand?

Your life is collapsing but you refuse to notice. Marc was brought up in a house that had alcohol at every meal. His father was a wine merchant, and Marc could tell the differences between vintages by the time he was fourteen.

When he was 21 and old enough to drink legally, he would join his father in wine tastings at the shop every weekend. But his father neglected to teach him restraint.

Marc began drinking more than his father. All of his friends drank.

He obsessed over the alcohol in his house, buying a case rather than a bottle. He reassured himself he wasn’t an alcoholic because he was never out of control in public.

A drink was his reward for a good day — and a bad one. His only difficulty was at home, with his family, where the restraints dropped away and his temper flared with one drink too many.

Every time his wife tried to talk to him about it, he pointed out angrily what a good provider he was, that his boss was happy with him, his friends liked him, so SHE was the one with the problem.

Eventually, Marc was let go by his company. Subsequent jobs would only last a year or two. Each time, Marc told himself that it was the downturn in the market…the company was going to fail anyway…it didn’t really showcase his talents.

It wasn’t until he came home to find his wife and children gone and divorce papers waiting for him that he faced the truth about his alcoholism.

You refuse to take responsibility for a problem underneath you. Wayne was a regional vice-president for a large corporation. He prided himself on hiring only those who were self-reliant and good leaders, grooming them for upward mobility in the company. Generally, his hiring choices were good ones, and worked out well.

The exception was in a sales branch about two hours away from headquarters. There, his new hire, Dana, was the only woman in an office full of men.

Dana was so intent on proving herself that she overcompensated, asking constant questions to learn the business quickly and working to put her stamp on decisions made.

Her immediate supervisor, Larry, was put off by her eagerness and did his best to undermine her. He deliberately kept office information from her, so she consistently failed to reach her sales goals. He would micromanage Dana, giving her no chance to prove her ideas might work.

And Dana was shut out of the camaraderie of the office. Whenever she tried to discuss matters with Larry, he would dismiss her concerns as imagination.

Dana eventually asked for a meeting with Wayne, expressing her distress at the situation and asking for his assistance in finding a solution.

Wayne refused, telling Dana, “This isn’t my problem, Dana; it’s yours. I hired you to be a self-starter — take responsibility for your work. If you have trouble with Larry, it’s up to you to fix it.”

Within six months, Dana left Larry’s company for his competition. There, because of better support from her superiors, Dana quickly became a star player, successfully taking a large share of business from Wayne’s company.

And Larry and Wayne couldn’t understand why she hadn’t worked out when she was with them.

It was never a problem before. Gina hated to bring anyone home to meet her family. Her mother was lovely and welcoming, but her father Joe didn’t seem to understand what was acceptable behavior in the 21st century.

His sense of humor was off color, and his opinions on the way the world worked were straight out of the 1950s: “Those blacks are lazy…gays ought to wear dresses if they won’t act like men… women don’t need to make as much as men, they’re only going to quit the job when they’re pregnant… a Pole, a Kike and a Wop walk into a bar… just bomb the Middle East and let God sort it out.”

Gina, exasperated, kept arguing with her father. “You just don’t SAY these things any more, Dad!” Joe dismissed her as being over-sensitive. “What’s the problem? That’s how everybody thought when I was growing up.”

Gina moved to another part of the country. She refused to come home. She would come to town and see her mother, but refuse to see her dad.

When Gina married, Joe was not invited, and he never met his grandchildren. It wasn’t until Gina was killed in a car accident that Joe met Gina’s husband and children.

Her husband, Havish, was from India, and her children, now teenagers, were clearly biracial.

When he went up to his son-in-law, Havish was cordial but cool. “She missed you, you know,” he said to Joe. “But she wasn’t going to have me — or our children — ridiculed because of your bigotry.”

Joe stammered, “But — but I wouldn’t have meant you — “

Havish shook his head. “You would have made an exception for us? Then how would I explain to my boys that they were acceptable but their cousins were not?”

Stunned but with no answer, Joe watched, grief-stricken, as his son-in-law and grandchildren turned their backs on him and mingled with the other mourners. His recognition of his problem had come too late.

Problems cannot be avoided, nor should they. If you incarnate, if you choose to come into this world of Duality, understand that such challenges are how we learn and grow.

It’s vital to know which difficulties are for solving, and which are truly not yours to fix. Problems are not cruel jokes by the Infinite, but requests by our Soul to learn how to expand our understanding, our hearts, and our acceptance.

They are here to teach us resilience and creativity, not as punishment.

Next time you find a problem standing in front of you, look at it objectively. See whether it is truly a friend or a foe. Once that is decided, you will be able to handle it so that it — and you — are made better by the solution.