Monday, October 4, 2010

When you think someone has a problem, the problem is really yours.

19 comments:

  1. Totally! Psychologists and psychiatrists affirm (and I believe) that, for many reasons, we are always projecting our own feelings on others because it’s hard for us to accept or even to notice our own faults and weakness. That’s why we need them (the shrinks)!

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  2. We must first remove the plank from our own eyes before we go fishing for the splinter in our neighbor's.

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  3. I want to amplify on my last somewhat short comment when I said {Would that include cancer?}.

    In one sense of course I agree with 'a' meaning of what you say. If I think someone has a problem, it is I who has the problem because I see the matter as a problem.

    This is true - and I am sure you meant this - whether or not and irrespective of whether the other person thinks they have a problem.

    And in one sense - if one takes a philosophical step back from the world and sees the whole of humanity in the round, then yes, it is surely a matter of perspective and choice as to whether one sees something as a problem.

    But in another sense - and not an abstraction but a real and pressing sense - a problem such as a terrible disease IS a problem - one cannot retreat or go forward into a philosophical equanimity.

    Well maybe a Zen monk or a Tibetan medidation practitioner can - but surely the thing that makes us human is precisely that we do not face everything with equanimity.

    We do not see all problems as illusions. We see pain because we have the ability to see pain.

    If we did not, then violent dictators would rule everything while we smiled benignly.

    We live both in the world of seeing things in the round and seeing things close-up precisely because that is who we are.

    We face the struggle between the two because we cannot divorce ourselves from either.

    We love and love not -We care and we care not - we see problems and we see no problems - we see distance and we see unity.

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  4. It depends. Sometimes being aware there is a problem with someone pushes you to realize something in yourself, but that does not at all signify that you are the problem.

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  5. hahahahahha! Isn't that the truth! The only thing we can change is ourselves and we'd all be better off if we stop looking at others so darn critically!

    Wonderful as always.

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  6. Sometimes what we think we see in others is really an image of our own character. Good observation Marty! Hope you had a great weekend. :)

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  7. So truth... especially when we think and don't see the problem .

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  8. I grew up reminding my critical self that what I didn't like in others were mainly things I didn't like in myself. The art of projection...

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  9. When I identify a problem in others I have made a judgment. I immediately remember the age old adage judge not lest you be judged. Or Mom used to say when you point fingers 3 of the 4 are pointing back and yourself.

    When someone else is ill I look at that as an opportunity to help not a good or evil judgment. It is a an observation that has intelligence choice mixed in.

    Blessings

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  10. My dad always used to say, "If everyone is the problem, the problem is you."

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  11. As a friend of mine once said, "If you don’t know what the problem is, you’re a lucky man, Gungadin!" He got up my nose.

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  12. Very appropriate for me and definitely resonates with me right now - thanks Marty :-)

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  13. I remember hearing an interesting speech at a seminar I went to.

    "If you someone thinks you're a (fill in disparaging blank), if you try to convince them otherwise, you're a bigger (Fill in blank)

    It's kind of true.

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  14. That's true! people make problems where are no problems, because it's human to complicate everything! Like the politicians do :)

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  15. My neighbour has passed away leaving behind a wife with 3 young daughters. The wife is a foreigner in my country and currently employed with low pay that can hardly support the family enough. Knowing their background, I tend to do my bit to help by providing them some household items like rice, grocery, cooking oil whenever I do my shopping.

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  16. I've been so trying to see people as a continuum of myself. They are definitely the best mirrors.

    Kiss you.

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