If you have, you know how frustrating it can be trying to overcome it. You just keep banging into it over and over and over and the darn thing just won't give. You could give up but you're not going to. So you keep banging away at it. Still it doesn't give. So you try new tactics. Nothing. You're just about beat and you're thinking that having this unsolvable problem is the most unfair thing in the world. You can't beat it!
But...is that necessarily a bad thing? Consider this from novelist Iris Murdoch:
A problem is a star. An unsolvable problem is a sun.
It's a little mysterious, isn't it? But I think there's a profound meaning there. And that is when we've run into something that we just can't overcome we grow like nobody's business. See, if we can easily overcome our problems, where's the growth? Where's the stretching us to become bigger people?
I'ts only when you get pushed to the very limit of your strength and endurance that you make the breakthroughs in growth that lead to an enlarged you. And the thing is you don't have to overcome your unsolvable problem to achieve that growth. In fact, you wouldn't achieve the same level of growth if you did.
So, like many things when it comes to growth, it hurts and frustrates to deal with an unsolvable problem. But there are great benefits in the enlarged sense of self that results from enduring that pain and frustration. I've got some unsolvable problems. Believe me, I know that pain and frustration firsthand.
But I want the growth, and if the pain and frustration is the price for it, then I'm paying it. Not happily, mind you, but yeah, I'm paying it.
The Theory Positive Disintegration may be useful.
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