Whose Problem Is It?

Life would be a lot easier for everyone if we could all keep our primary focus on ourselves and our own personal issues. Life gets difficult, messy and downright ugly when we start looking beyond our own noses. Allowing our noses to grow and stick themselves into other people’s business is one of the biggest sources of trouble in daily life. Unfortunately, it has become epidemic. Boundaries have been blurred and completely lost in some cases. Many people no longer know where they end and other people begin.

If you are no longer sure where you end and someone else begins, ask yourself questions like “Whose problem is it?” or “How does this affect my life?”

We often have problems bombarding us from all directions. We have a report due at work in the next three days, our spouse is depressed about turning 50 years old, and our 16 year old niece has runaway from home-- leaving our sister-in-law to fall apart all over us. To make matters worse, our mother is in the late stages of leukemia and is faced with making life and death decisions about extraordinary life support measures. We’re spending many hours and days worrying about our spouse’s mood, how to solve the problems between our niece and sister-in-law, and how to save our mother’s life. No wonder we haven’t made much headway on the report that soon needs to be in our boss’s hands.

As we take time to breathe, we realize that we’re also spending a lot of time concerned about a close friend who is diabetic and noticeably gaining weight. Every time we see him, it seems he has gained another five pounds. We’ve spent tremendous energy trying to come up with ways to boost his self-esteem and to make him happy so he’ll stop overeating. Then there’s the neighbor next door: An attractive lady in her early 20s who has a new boyfriend over every weekend. The neighbor on the other side of her has started rumors brewing. We’re feeling ourselves being drawn-in to the titillation of it all as if we’re living in a soap opera. To make matters worse, we are now guilty of gossiping about her and thinking that we know better about how she should be living her life.

The more we get a grip on ourselves, the better we are able to ask ourselves questions like “Whose problem is it?” When we apply this question to our list of problems, we discover that only one of these many things we are worried about actually belongs to us: The report that’s due at work in three days. This problem is directly our responsibility and no one else’s. It DIRECTLY affects our life and no one else’s. Our spouse’s mid-life crisis directly affects his/her life. It is his/her problem. It may INDIRECTLY affect our life because we care, but it is not our problem. The same is true concerning our runaway niece. She is our brother and sister-in-law’s problem. Our mother’s leukemia is her problem. Our best friend’s over-eating is his problem. And the lady next door’s life is none of our business.

Suddenly, the weight of the world is lifted off our shoulders. We realize for the first time that we have been overstepping our boundaries. We have wrongly taken on other people’s problems as if they were ours to worry about and to solve. We understand right here, right now that they are not our problems. We can sympathize with the others we have been overly concerned about. We can pray for them and help them when they ask for our assistance, but we are NOT responsible for their lives or their problems. We can’t rescue them and we can’t continue insanely searching for solutions to problems that aren’t ours to own.

Ah! We’re feeling as light as a feather… until we remember we still have that report to turn in to the boss. We panic for a second, then we realize that we can get it done. Yup, we can take care of OUR problem now that we’ve let go of everyone else’s problems. And we can allow our souls to shine!