Solve the Problem
If my children remember one nugget of wisdom from all my years of parenting it will probably be this:
Solve the problem.
On Saturday, that advice came home to roost.
After a week of a hundred dinky setbacks, our vacuum went out while I was going over the bedroom floor. It did fine on the push stroke, but when I pulled it over a tuft of cat fur, that turned out to be one hairball too many. The vacuum sputtered for half a second before settling into a high-pitched whine that produced no suction whatsoever.
I know, I know. Minor inconvenience without—one would hope—serious emotional ramifications. But the vacuum is an important appliance around our house. We have cats (with whom I have a love-hate relationship), and we also have friends with cat allergies. Before they come over, we have to vacuum the carpets, sequester the felines, and vacuum once more so that our pets don’t kill our visitors. Without the vacuum, either the humans or the cats have to go.
So we had a problem—one that, truth be told, I would rather not have to deal with. But my own voice echoed in my head from years past. You can’t solve anything you aren’t willing to address.
Luckily, our past selves had invested in a Dyson model specifically designed for pet owners. I say invested—this thing wasn’t cheap. Dysons are the iPhones of the home appliance world, pricey engineering marvels designed for high performance and intuitive operation. It doesn’t take a genius to operate a vacuum. It shouldn’t take a genius to fix one.
And in fact, it didn’t. Denise located a clip near the base and opened up the brush apparatus. For ten minutes, we pulled out wood chips and cat hair and carpet fibers that had balled together into a Frankensteinian dust bunny. We unclipped and unscrewed a few more pieces to get at the stubborn fibers and check the filter. Once that was done, we reassembled everything in less than two minutes. When I hit the power button, the vacuum worked good as new.
Like I said, this was not a genius-level accomplishment. With a limited set of basic premises, almost anyone could have figured it out. What I wonder is how many people would have tried.
I wrote last week about the toll stress and fear take on our cognitive functions, particularly our ability to find creative solutions. I think those negative emotions also rob us of our faith—in goodness, in God, in other people, in our own ability to improve conditions and clear the inevitable hurdles life throws our way. When you no longer believe in your own capacity for finding solutions, it’s hard to even want to try.
Worse still, fear makes us easy targets for the less scrupulous among us, no matter how pious or idealistic they sound. Whether they’re recruiting voters or converts, the playbook is the same. Once we convince you of the problem, you’ll see that ours is the only real solution. If we can make you afraid, we can control your decision—especially if we can undercut your self-reliance in the process.
Not every problem is fixable, at least not by my hands alone. I won’t be doing any DIY dental care, nor do I want to void the warranty on my phone by changing the battery myself. But I know who to go to for such matters, and I can engage those professionals as partners in finding solutions. If I just keep my head and examine the situation honestly, I can usually find a way around or through the difficulty.
The lesson I’ve tried to instill in my children—biological or quasi-adopted—is not so much a matter of technical skill or even work ethic. It’s simpler than that. Don’t be overwhelmed by the thing that faces you. Approach it as though you’ve already overcome.
As I write this, Jay, our seventeen-year-old artist, is working on a depiction of a Tolkien villain using a digital design program he downloaded over Christmas. But like any creative endeavor, the road from inception to completion is fraught with unforeseen struggles. Jay explains one of these to me—something involving the smudging feature and how the cloak looks against his as yet unfinished background—and laments the work it will take to correct it.
“Solve the problem,” I say. I know I’ve gotten through when Jay rolls his eyes.
It’s hard to imagine a more gratifying response.
