Who cannot give good counsel? ‘Tis cheap it cost them nothing.
—Robert Burton—
Other people’s problem’s are so easy to solve. Isn’t it amazing how much better we are at their lives than our own? Of course, other people’s lives don’t hook us emotionally, by means of love or guilt or precious delusions. We can look at them wisely with detachment.
Detachment is the key to solving our own problems, too, except that detached intelligence may see a solution we’re unwilling to use—especially if it means changing our behavior. Then we may feel despair. We’re stuck, between the rock of our intelligence and the hard place of our reluctance to change.
Whether we stay stuck depends on us. We can choose to live as hybrids, a little wise, a little infantile; a little happy, a little miserable. Or we can risk change and growth. Within us is the knowledge and power to get what we want, if we’ll believe in ourselves.
My problems are like other people’s. Whether I solve them or not is up to me.