I love big problems

Big problems suck.

That's why I love them.

They're like the big man upstairs' dizzying sucker punches to the temple. You can't hope to dodge them. They knock you out cold. Then you blink your weighty eyelids open, face-to-bloody-face with the decision to make friends with the cold, unforgiving pavement or get up to fight another day.

Now, before I go full soapbox mode and make you wonder if I'm auditioning for a spot on a late-night talk show¹, let me illustrate my point with something relatable.

Imagine you're stuck under the thumb of your tyrannical boss who seems only ever to flash that same waiting-room-Zoom-rehearsed imperceptibly asymmetric smile when in conversation with a client. It’s never accompanied by the eye-squinching or other untold facial muscle movements that betray a genuine smile. But with you, he won’t even wax faux-smile anymore. Instead he'd prefer in your dreaded weekly 1-1 syncs to dictate to you everything you've fucked up since the day you were born², all in the name of being a good manager who gives thoughtful and consistent feedback, obviously. It's actually worse than a thankless job. He quietly thanks you. Of course, you never hear it, but rest assured that in the deep recesses of his ego you're a constant source of gratitude for giving him the voiceless punching bag he desperately needs to convince himself he's a great manager. Okay I admit I may be taking some authorial liberty in casting aspersions on the anti-liberty managerial class, but I don't think anyone cares to white knight these starch-collared, meticulously groomed antiheros of corp America. 

You put up with this haranguing for awhile because you're getting paid, and you can tell your friends you hold a respectable job, and inertia, and you’re a functioning member of society and what not. But eventually this evolves from mild interpersonal irritation to weekly borderline dread. This deepening in emotional character ushers in an unwelcome change in the question you find yourself asking. No longer do you ask how you can mitigate, in some nouveau-stoic sense (e.g. 10min daily Vipassana seshes³), the short-term psychological perturbances from encounters with your overlord. You now find yourself asking "What the fuck am I doing with my life?" in some semi-existential sense. In a bygone time, you would avoid admitting your malcontent to your friends for fear of not seeming to be on the perfect life trajectory which of course you certainly are which is why it doesn't bear worth mentioning in the first place. Who are you trying to convince? 

And that’s when it hits you like a ton of bricks crashing down from the heavens: this is a big problem. That bonk on the head hits you so hard that you stare up to the sky somehow simultaneously both starry-eyed and the most clear-eyed you’ve been in a long time. You only know one thing, but it’s one more truth than you knew before: you know that you need to make a big change. And big changes require actions. They are beyond the scope of linguistic and mental hacks to semantically but otherwise only phantasmically alter your reality. You're really left with only two options here:

1. Curl up in a ball and let the crushing weight of despair snuff you out,

   OR

2. Summon your last vestiges of courage and confront this Kafkaesque crisis head-on.⁴

I know, that was a dimestore lie. I suggested that first option the same way a stone-faced doctor tells you that you can either quit smoking or die in 10 years. That second option, though, that’s where the magic happens. It’s the alchemical crucible wherein metamorphosis happens, where pressure transforms coal into diamonds. Where you grow into a brand new person — a better, more authentic, happier version of yourself.

So you decide to finally muster up the courage to quit that soul-sucking job. Hallelujah! All of your problems have just evaporated leaving behind the revivifying mists of tranquility. 

Errrrrr sorry, I lied again — really nasty habit.

The reality is once your freedom oasis fizzles out, you will most likely find yourself dunked headfirst into a sea of troubles, snagged in a unrecognizably-local minimum of bewilderment and disarray. Hopelessly lost without even a buoy to mark how deep at sea you really are. You're sailing through these uncharted waters without Apple Maps, and it's a terrifying voyage. There will inevitably be moments when you question your course, when the fear of failure and the uncertainty of the future chew away at your resolve. You wonder if you weren't better off floating idly in guaranteed misery in the shallow end than treading water in a boundless abyss of uncertainty.

But lo and behold, one day you spot land in the distance. Your salt-stung eyes nearly mistake it for a mirage, but it's really there. You claw manically towards the shore until you shovel up your first waterlogged grains of sand . Taking those first steps on the velvety shore of this new beach — your new beach — your overbearing weltschmerz recedes with the crash of the wave as you emerge onto land sprinting with a feathery lightness to your step. And it's midway into that very stride that you come to the realization that you're no longer racing away from something, but instead, you're charging headlong toward a brighter horizon. Toward a job where you actually don't despise your boss, where you're passionate about the work, where the team around you seems to genuinely give a damn about your success. More importantly, you're moving in the right direction along a path to a better version of yourself.

This metamorphosis may not have been possible without that initial swan dive into the unknown, without plunging headfirst into the sea of troubles and wrestling your way out of that cavernous local minimum. It all began with acknowledging that you were up against a big problem.

It's the big problems that essentialize the human experience. They ignite real growth and development. They serve as a litmus test, sifting the gem from the rubble, and forcing us to reevaluate our priorities and values. I love big problems because they remind us of our own grit and resilience, and because they push us to break free from the suffocating grip of mediocrity and complacency. To be a unique human. That is, after all, what we're shooting for — to be both an individual and universal at the same time, embodying the duality of Atman and Brahman. In confronting big problems, we not only uncover our individual capabilities but also tap into the collective strength and wisdom that transcends our personal limitations.

So yeah, big problems suck. But that's why we love them. They're life's universal love-hate relationship. Without them, this whole game would be relaxing, predictable and utterly meaningless like repeatedly playing a chess bot on level 1 difficulty.

There really are no other options. I sugarcoated it before with option 1, where I suggested — maybe a tad bit facetiously, I confess — that you could curl up into a ball and hopelessly wait for the world to stop crushing you and toss you a bone. But for a more blunt and unforgiving treatment of that anti-reality, I will conclude with deference to a giant on whose shoulders I stand, albeit unworthily:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them?

1. At least have the grace to malign me as the modern version of these caricaturesque wisdom-peddlers: a secondhand mouthpiece who shepherds wisdom brought down from Mt. Sinai after chain-listening to Tim Ferris pods with successful people rationalizing their hyperlinear, inevitable paths to the promised land via pithy oxymoronic aphorisms: “Embrace struggle,” “have the hard conversations,” “do what no one else wants to do” +... soundbite +...

2. Your life may as well have begun when you joined the company for all he cares.

3. Yours truly confesses to sporadic but glorious two-week sprints on the Waking Up app. Don’t judge me, I take “Begin Again” literally when delivered with Sam Harris’ undeniable lived-five-lifetimes affect.

4. Or “sack up” for you Urban Dictionites.