None of us set out to be copouts, but somewhere along the line, sometimes people lose touch with reality. We can say we care about solutions, about real positive change, but if we refuse to get beneath the surface, we prove ourselves Mega-Fibbers.
Primo Levi said, “Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”
Everybody knows there is nothing more dangerous than ambitious Mega-Fibbers who refuse to get beneath the surface.
At the end of the day, life is about solving problems, shallow and deep problems, and it’s really not a complicated process.
There are only two options to solving a problem: find a solution or make one.
Get out there and do the research and find what worked for others, or get out there and get creative with it.
Either way, you have to get out there and do it.
But what happens when your solutions don’t work?
You either quit and accept the problems into your life, complaining about them every so often like a broken record (becoming a Mega-Fibber!) or you take ownership and ask the deeper questions.
Maybe you misdiagnosed it?
Maybe you missed some important evidence and jumped to a conclusion?
But what happens when you don’t do either? What happens when you stay shallow, using the same old excuse you’ve always used, refusing to go deep and find the real issue?
You go the way of the Mega-Fibber.
You end up frustrated, swearing the solution doesn’t exist while you are ironically separated from it by just a couple steps.
This examination—it’s hard work, it is not for the faint of heart.
But Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living.
What happens when you start examining things?
Well, you will very likely unearth very discouraging, dark, and depressing things that you’ve shoved down deep, and shoved down deep for a very good reason.
What this means is that regardless of why your problem isn’t solved yet, you yourself are part of that problem, and to the extent you are able and willing to dig deep, you will experience growth and victory.
We lack courage, but we also lack motivation.
Nassim Taleb said, “The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.”
Carbs are a wonderful thing, and so is a paycheck, but they have adverse affects on us, on our core mission as problem-solvers.
The fact is the deepest problems of life often go untouched by those with the most power.
Not because they aren’t aware of the problems, but because they just don’t care anymore—they are insulated from them.
This is a problem in itself.
What’s the solution?
Ask questions. Open yourself up to the reality you may be wrong. Be courageous and let others in to challenge your perspective and analysis, even your own selves.
There’s no telling what we will awaken in the deep, but there’s no other way around the mountain.
We all have two options. We stay on this side of the mountain with the Mega-Fibbers, or we face our fears for the sake of the solutions and go into the deeps.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke