What Problems?
I’ve been thinking. (I know. I should be careful. I might hurt myself. 😉) You see we’ve just finished our second block of 12 Fish & Bear events and it’s made me a little reflective. Anyway, I had this thought and wondered if I might be a little mental. The thought was….
Sometimes there isn’t a problem.
Bananas, right? I mean who would look at anything going on in the world right now and not have the word problem come up pretty much right away. And I am not denying there’s problems. Big billionaire-sized problems.
But what I really mean is that so much of what I see and read about how to be a proper human these days is about solving problems. Be they financial, emotional, psychological, or physical problems. Never have I read an article ever that said, “You’re doing just fine as you are. Well done.” (Though that could be me picking the wrong articles to read.)
I like to think that humans are more than the sum of their issues, or their resume, or their awards. There has to be something more to life than constantly defining your right to have one.
I guess Fish & Bear could be said to solve the problem of isolation, which has most probably been caused by our social-media-infused modern lifestyles. It could even be said that it solves the difficulty that people have connecting with new people. But for me, I think F&B reminds us that we do all belong. That from the moment we arrive on this earth, we belong and do not need to justify our existence.
Does that mean we solve the problem of people not feeling like they belong? Perhaps, however, I don’t know if you should ‘feel’ that you belong. You just do belong, whether you feel like you do or not.
I’ve heard it said that the solution to a problem is not within the problem. Or in other words, constantly looking at the problem, thinking about the problem, and defining the problem will hardly ever deliver the solution to you.
When I was an avid motorcyclist in the UK, I learned of a phenomenon called ‘object fixation.’ It describes the way we tend to focus on potential threats, just as we did when the threats were hungry predators. It’s in our nature to stare at the problem. When you are riding a motorcycle at Freeway speed (I’ll take the 5th with regard to the specific speed😉), you go where you look. So if you want to avoid the huge pothole in the lane in front of you, look at the safe spaces of the road, don’t look at the problematic hole. You go where you look, and that huge pothole is not where you'd like to go.
So what does this have to do with Fish & Bear? That seems to be consistently the question I keep asking myself. I am so tempted to go into the next block of 12 events, looking at the problems - I could wallow in them like a hippo at a favorite watering hole. I’m curious, though, what would it look like if I focused instead on accepting that F&B exists and even belongs. What would that look like?
Just a thought.
Hope you’ll come on Thursday to help us start the next part of this Fish & Bear journey.
Mark
xo
Fish and Bear is held every Thursday at 7pm.
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I really appreciated this. Much needed. See you Thursday.