Obsidian Sync 2024-12-10 09:09:45

content/daily-notes/2024-12-10.md

@@ -4,3 +4,6 @@ This chapter is titled *Develop a taste for problems: On never reaching the trou
 
 > I suspect that most of us, except perhaps the very Zen or the very elderly, move through our days with a similar if largely unconscious assumption that at some point – maybe not soon, but eventually – we’ll make it to the phase of life which won’t involve confronting an endless fusillade of things to deal with. The unfortunate consequence is that we experience our ordinary problems – the bills to pay, the minor conflicts to resolve, each little impediment that stands between us and realizing our goals – as doubly problematic. First, there’s the problem itself. But then there’s the way in which the very existence of any such problems undermines our yearning to feel perfectly secure and in control. So we spend our lives leaning into the future, unconsciously deeming whatever’s happening now to be fundamentally flawed, because it’s marred by too many problems. And quite possibly deeming ourselves to be fundamentally flawed, too – or else wouldn’t we have figured out some way to eliminate all these problems by now? Yet the reality, as Harris goes on, is that ‘… life is an unending series of complications, so it doesn’t make any sense to be surprised by the arrival of the next one.’
 
+> A friend of mine vividly recalls the uplifting and energizing moment when, feeling burdened like Harris by the endless problems that seemed to get in the way of her doing her job, it dawned on her that the problems were the job. Anyone, or a piece of software, could do her job, if it weren’t for the problems. Her unique contribution lay in her capacity for solving them.
+> 
+ > Beyond the mountains, there are always more mountains, at least until you reach the final mountain before your time on earth comes to an end. In the meantime, few things are more exhilarating than mountaineering.