What if the Problem is in Fact Your Need?
‘What if the problem is in fact your need?’
Those words, or something very close to them, were what my biographical counsellor, Julia, said to me a few months ago.
Hearing them at almost any other time in my life would most likely have confused me; maybe even frustrated me.
But in that moment, I felt relief.
I had been moving, for several months, in the direction of acceptance.
But it was a resigned acceptance.
It went something like this: I thought I could solve the problem of feeling isolated and lonely in London by moving somewhere else.
And it might have worked. Sometimes doing a thing like that does solve a problem like that.
But it didn’t. Not for me.
It puts me in mind of a great question that the Costa Rican coach Minor Arias told me he asks his clients when he appeared on The Coach’s Journey Podcast.
‘Tell me the three biggest problems in your life,’ Minor would say. (You can do this too - pause now to write them down.)
And then, once they’d told him, he’d ask, ‘And what do they have in common?’
The answer, at least in part: you.
And so it could be that moving house would solve the problem of feeling isolated and lonely. Certainly a city like London can create those feelings in people.
But if the problem isn’t actually London; if in fact the problem is me, then… well, there’s really nowhere I can run.
And so, acceptance: I feel lonely.
But also resignation.
Now, that is an upgrade.
It was from Jim Dethmer that I first really heard the old zen saying: suffering is never caused by what is actually here now, but by resisting what is actually here now.
(I had heard things like that before, but it was from Dethmer that I really heard it.)
Resignation: ‘Things are like this.’ That’s much better from the suffering of ‘I can’t accept that things are like this.’
And then: ‘What if the problem is in fact your need?’
And that’s more.
It’s more full of possibility: it gives me a space to move in, not the glum acceptance, but a possibility that this thing I’ve been avoiding is in fact what I really need.
What if I really need loneliness?
What if the next stage of my journey is to really be with myself, just myself? To really step into who I am and - by default, then - who I could be.
And what about my other problems?
What if this sadness, underlying sadness, that is present for me? What if it’s not a problem, but a need. A need to truly be sad.
There’s a tragedy to this, too, because these things, loneliness, sadness: they’ve caused me pain as I’ve resisted them.
They’ve caused me anxiety and suffering.
And they were here, with me, through all of that. A problem.
I could, perhaps, have always had them: 'Hello sadness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again.’
A need greeted; a need met.
And, so, for you.
The suffering you feel may come from the resistance, not the thing.
And resignation may be preferable to that: what if things were just like this?
But, more: the problems you think you have may in fact be your need.
Right here, available to you.
Always available to you.
Always some part of you, ready to be welcomed and cared for.
Ready to be met.
And, when welcomed and cared for, perhaps it is really the need you don’t even know you have.
What then?
What might be possible then?
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PS You might be interested in my latest long-read article. It’s about Mohamed Al-Fayed, Enron and Omar Little from The Wire. It’s called A Man Got to Have a Code: https://www.robbieswale.com/writing/2024/10/11/a-man-got-to-have-a-code-leading-with-honour-iii
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.