Everybody has problems. Many problems are simply caused by negative events
occurring, such as illness, war, or crime. But an important, yet completely
different set of problems are caused by the exact opposite: A lack of any
events.
  Far too many people--a majority of people, it seems--go through their lives
in a sort of malaise, full of half-conceived ideas about what they want to do
with their lives but not too sure exactly what it is, much less how to do it.
Eventually, frustrated by their lack of progress, people either give up or
continue beating their heads against a brick wall, continually striving for
something but never apparently getting anywhere.
  Part of the problem is the single-minded, machine-like focus that our
modern culture tends to instill in people. The rigors of modern life
condition people to put their heads down, ignore distractions, and simply
press toward any objective laid in front of them, like a bull after a red
cape. My background is in computers, and when you want to design something
for a computer--whether hardware or software--it becomes important to be able
to focus. Only when you are able to focus so strongly on the technicalities
of what you're designing that the world around you fades into indistinction
are you able to really see the process clearly. Don't look around, just keep
your eyes focused on the goal, keep pressing toward it, and eventually you'll
get there.
  However, while this approach may work for some things, the best way to deal
with a brick wall isn't to keep pressing against it. You can beat against the
wall until you are exhausted, but your body is likely to break down long
before the wall does. The best way to deal with a brick wall is simple: Walk
around it. Of course, this requires pausing to take a look around, and
obviously, not all walls have openings that allow people to simply pass
through, but the point is that when you're faced with a seemingly
insurmountable lack of progress, sometimes the best approach is not to keep
pressing forward, but rather to change your technique or your thinking.
  A few examples might be in order to help illustrate this point, so I'll
provide a few.
  The first example is a parable, meaning to the best of my knowledge, it has
not actually happened. Imagine a man who goes to start his car, but upon
turning the key, he finds that nothing happens. Undeterred, the man tries
again. And again. And yet again. He's not going to let his apparent lack of
progress stop him; if he can only turn the key hard enough, or fast enough,
or a sufficient number of times, he believes he can make the car start. For
hours he sits there, turning the key again and again, berating himself for
his inefficacy. He must turn the key harder! Faster! Better! Finally, after
the man is thoroughly exhausted and unable to continue, he asks a friend for
help. The friend, suspecting a dead battery, tries jump-starting the car, and
in a few moments the car is running. The car was not refusing to start for
lack of effort, but what the would-be driver needed was a shift in his
thinking, rather than the "try, try again" approach.
  A real-world example can be seen in a friend of mine who, some years ago,
got into a fight with his brother over some minor thing which neither of them
seem to remember now. My friend felt his brother had offended him so terribly
that he began seeking legal action, which is a bit of a losing battle in
itself since I don't think you can take someone to court just for insulting
you. But my friend, undeterred, spent (some would say "wasted") literally
years going to countless lawyers, explaining his case to each one, hoping to
find someone who would see a winning court case. No one did. They all said
one of two things: Either "You have no case", or "I'll need payment up
front", which is lawyer-speak for "You have no case, but I don't care as long
as I get paid". The solution--to forget about the court case and try to patch
things up with the brother--might seem obvious to you and I, but it certainly
wasn't obvious to my friend at the time, last as he was in a blinding
maelstrom of anger and hate.
  Another true example can be seen in the case of my mother, who for most of
her life had a dream of owning a large country house, away from the bustle of
the city. This is a pleasant enough goal to have, I suppose, but the problem
is that achieving this goal requires money, and quite a lot of it. Undeterred
by her own poverty, my mother did the only things she could think of to
achieve her goal: Work. She had two jobs, worked 7 days a week, and routinely
put in overtime at each job. To myself and the rest of our family, the strain
she was putting on herself was plainly apparent, but she did not care. She
had her goal, and she would work toward it or die trying. Ultimately, she did
the latter. To this day, the general agreement among my family is that she
literally worked herself to death. In refusing to focus on anything other
than work, my mother pushed everyone away from her, managing to alienate her
entire family, creating a life of sadness and loneliness which, combined with
her constant state of overwork, took my mother before she reached 60 years of
age. I wish I could say I was sad when it happened, but my mother's life had
been so unpleasant for her and everyone around her than when she died, I felt
more relief than anything else, and most of my family seemed to share this
sentiment. She could have had a better life by settling for a more modest
house, and she knew it, for we'd told her many times. But she refused to
change.
  In all of these stories, we see people who could have dealt with their
problems more effectively if they'd changed their thinking. Unfortunately,
each of them would have had to give up something which they did not want to
let go of: My mother would have had to give up the dream of a mansion. The
man with the non-starting car would have had to swallow his pride in asking
for help. And my lawsuit-seeking friend would have had to give up the
million-dollar settlemenet he believed he was due, because goodness knows,
you deserve a million dollars if someone doesn't like your haircut or refuses
to pass the television remote control.
  Life isn't always what we want it to be, and despite what people who push
"positive thinking" tend to claim, you can't always MAKE it into what you
want, either. Hard work can get you places, definitely, but too many people
in the world could benefit from a little less of working for money and a bit
more working toward understanding of just where their lives are going and
why. We can't always have everything we want, and sometimes, we shouldn't.
How many people waste their lives not realizing that?