My brain seems preoccupied with problems. Evolved on the savannahs once we began walking upright, no evolutionary biologist can really say why we developed a cortical brain, which can reason and use language, develop mathematics and compose music. It’s five times the size of the more primitive mammalian and reptilian brains on top of which it’s built, combined. Back in the day, I imagine, and by the day, I mean a few million years ago, it was pretty good at solving problems related to survival; defending the body in which it was housed from the slings and arrows of neighboring bands, outsmarting lions, and hunting the megfauna. But now, it seems, it doesn’t have enough to do.

It seems obsessed with creating high-class problems and then solving them, almost as if it were a game. And problems almost always seem to exist ‘out there.’ That distinction between the inside and the outside – inside my skin, outside in the world – is the fundamental division that my mind makes. Preoccupied with problem-solving, some of us become problem people. We’re not happy unless there’s a problem to solve. And so, as soon as one is fixed, another one pops up to take its place. A new worry replaces the old one. I call it the problem problem. What’s the solution solution?

We could take our problems piecemeal, one at a time, and try to solve each one individually. That’s the approach to problems and problem-solving humanity’s been using ever since we’ve been out there hunting and gathering. But there is a another, more global solution, and it is this:

See that no problem exists except first between my ears. A problem may seem to be out there, to have a source external to myself, a counterpart in the world. But any problem is always first in my head. An external condition is perceived as a problem. That is its fundamental source. For most First World problems are problems of perception. I wanted chocolate and I got peach. My house isn’t big enough. I’m going bald and you’re not. It’s a problem of relative deprivation. And by that I don’t mean that I didn’t have a better mother-in-law.

There are those who really lack. But most of the people I know? Their problems are often matters of taste and comparison. Their closets aren’t big enough to cram their stuff into. Their partner has love handles. Those types of problems live inside my head as not enough, or not the right kind. Those are problems my mind makes up because it wants to have something to complain about. Complain about me. Complain about you. Complain about the world. Those are the three areas.

So, my main problem is that I invent problems. I make them up, sometimes to change me, sometimes to change you. I wonder what life would be like if I didn’t have any problems like these? Maybe I’d be bored. But maybe, just maybe, I’d be happy. Maybe I’d be grateful because I’d have given myself permission to be grateful for all that I had, all that’d been taken away, and all that I’d been left with. Maybe all I need to do is give myself permission to be happy, and my only problem is that I won’t allow myself to be.

© 2022 by Michael C. Just

Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.

You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23

Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002

Four of his short stories have recently been published online:

Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)

The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW

I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October

Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within