Thinking about whether or not to solve the problem

August 24th, 2013 | Reflections

Sometimes I wake up with a desperate urgency that it must be resolved immediately. Other times, though, this glorious mood of acceptance washes over me, and I feel it really doesn’t matter if it is never solved at all.

There are times when I feel it is my responsibility to solve it entirely on my own, yet other times I really feel it should be a team effort, that we should strive for a consensus.

Sometimes it feels like a black problem. Sometimes it feels like a white problem. Other times, I’m sure it’s grey, but I can’t decide what shade.

Sometimes I feel it can only be solved by a huge injection of funds, yet other times I feel it is not really a financial problem at all.

I’m often grateful for the internet age, believing that cyberspace will come to our rescue, but then I think we’d probably manage just as well with a lump of charcoal and a sheet of bark.

Billy or kettle? Microwave or campfire? Central heating or extra blankets? There are no easy answers.

Will our descendants judge us harshly or kindly? Have we done too little, or too much? Or too little in the wrong direction and too much in the right direction? But how can that be?

And who are our descendants, anyway? Those that come ten years after? Or those that come a hundred? Or a thousand, even?

Perhaps the next generation will judge us harshly, but the following generation will reverse that judgement?

And what is a generation anyway? If I have my kids at 20, and they have kids at 20, and you have kids at 40, have my kids skipped a generation?

Sometimes I think it’s absolutely critical, but other times I think it really doesn’t matter at all.

Am I the only person that thinks this way?