Showing posts with label Far Gone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Far Gone. Show all posts

October 23, 2015

Does Every Problem Have A Solution?

So someone said something interesting to me yesterday.

They were going off about this and that problem in the world. 

Then seemingly exasperated by the current and desperate state of affairs, they go "You know what? Not every problem has a solution."

And that really took me aback.

As a student and then a professional, I have always prided myself on looking for a solution to every problem. 

Sometimes we get it right and sometimes we don't, but I was always taught to try!

Now someone says to me this earth-shattering news that maybe there is not a good solution out there for every catastrophic problem.

So this got me thinking...

Maybe some problems are just too big or too complex for our mortal minds to even understand or our supercomputers to really solve. 

Or perhaps sometimes things have gone too far or are too far gone, and we can't always easily just turn back the clock.

Are there some things that we can't really make right what we did so wrong for so long, despite the best intentions now. 

And in life are some things just a catch-22 or a zero-sum game--where every way forward is another dead end or it has consequences which are too painful or otherwise unacceptable. 

This sort of reminds me of the sick brutal Nazi in the Holocaust who took a women with two beautiful young children to the side and said, "Choose!"

"Choose what?" she innocently replies.

And the sadistic Nazi pulling out his gun says, "Choose which of your children will live and which will die, you have 30 seconds or I kill them both!"

Indeed, some problems have no good solution as hard as that is for me to hear or accept.  

All we can do is our best, and even when we can't satisfactorily solve those completely vexing problems to us (because some things are not in the realm of the possible for mere mortals), we have to continue to go forward in life because there really is no going back. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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