DAY 75 – TWO ASPECTS OF NOT HAVING DIFFICULTIES

It is one month after I went to the event at my college where five hundred students gathered together in a field and the organizer of this event discussed the issue of human problems. Since then people who were there along with other students and faculty have been continuously talking about it on campus. Our weekly student run newspaper has put articles online that students have submitted about problems they have had.

So many kids talked about how they have been mistreated while they were growing up. Some have had parents who yelled at them and used a belt to punish them when their parents got mad. There were a few articles about how the person they were dating verbally demeaned them or just ended the relationship by never getting in touch with them again. Other kids told about getting picked on in grammar and high school by other kids.

Many articles were about the problems that exist in the community where they come from. Some people had water coming out of their faucets that was polluted that made people sick. Others came from areas where shootings were too common and created fear in the people who live there. Too many students told of the hardships they faced because of their race, religion,ethnicity or sexual orientation.

A large number of articles were about problems that were of a global nature. Many students were concerned about people living in poverty around the planet. They also showed their concern about the hate and bigotry that exists in this world. The one issue that stood out more than anything else was the overwhelming concern for their immediate future because the earth has been warming up with many more extreme weather events now than just a few years ago.

While all of these articles describe how something in their personal life, in the lives of people they know or in society at large was problematic, one article was completely different. This article discussed problems from the perspective of not having them.

The author of this article pointed out that there are two aspects about problems that are essential in not having them. The first one is that human beings need to make an effort to not have them develop in the first place. The second aspect to not having problems is that there are situations that develop where a problem does occur and each of us needs to quickly take steps to eliminate those difficulties so the problem does not linger or becomes worse over time.

The article went on to discuss how life becomes so much easier when a person or an entire group of people do not have problems that they have to deal with. People are more relaxed and at ease without the tension and pressure that can engulf their thoughts. Time can be spent on things they enjoy doing instead of having to deal with the unwanted. It does not matter whether a difficulty is of a personal nature or something that an entire community has to deal with, human beings are affected by problems even if they are short in duration.

Because of this letter about not having problems I now realize that our ability to have a better life and live in a better world requires every human being to become cognizant of how to prevent problems from developing in both one’s personal life and the world at large and when something does become problematic we need to immediately take the necessary actions so it doesn’t become an ongoing struggle that constantly requires our time, attention and energy.