The first is to <i>develop a taste for having problems</i>. Behind our urge to race through every obstacle or challenge, in an effort to get it "deal… - Oliver Burkeman

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The first is to develop a taste for having problems. Behind our urge to race through every obstacle or challenge, in an effort to get it "dealt with," there's usually the unspoken fantasy that you might one day finally reach the state of having no problems whatsoever. As a result, most of us treat the problems we encounter as doubly problematic: first because of whatever specific problem we're facing; and second because we seem to believe, if only subconsciously, that we shouldn't have problems at all. Yet the state of having no problems is obviously never going to arrive.

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About Oliver Burkeman

Oliver Burkeman (born 1975) is a British journalist (principally for the British newspaper The Guardian) and writer.

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Additional quotes by Oliver Burkeman

Truly doing justice to the astonishing gift of a few thousand weeks isn't a matter of resolving to "do something remarkable" with them. In fact, it entails precisely the opposite: refusing to hold them to an abstract and overdemanding standard of remarkableness, against which they can only ever be found wanting, and taking them instead on their own terms, dropping back down from godlike fantasies of cosmic significance into the experience of life as it concretely, finitely — and often enough, marvelously — really is.

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