Life is a Predicament

“Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.”

        George Santayana was right when he said that life is a predicament, but we ought not to stop there, for when we look at ourselves deeply and we overthink this one-sided statement, then we may find that most of our day-to-day problems are quite insignificant. 

This brings us back to yesterday’s topic, it is only our projections and conceptions, our perceptions, that complicate life’s predicaments and allow them to grow out of proportion. You see, many find it much easier to point out the problem rather than to find a way how it should be solved. We look at the chasm in the path but fail to see the bridge nearby. We are still etching the negative in stone.

Allow me three contributions to this topic. Theodore Rubin said that the problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem. Santosh Kalwar thought that every problem comes with a baggage of solutions, while the Dalai Lama saw it as such: “If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it's not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.” 

Very true, it does sound a lot like the “serenity prayer”. Yes, life is a predicament, but one that we overcome every single day, act by act.

Life is a predicament, it’s truly such a jam,

A never-ending experiment to show me who I really am,

but I can overcome this, it’s all so fixable,

with a little bit of praxis and sheer power of will.