What Problem Are You Trying to Solve?

No matter what plans I take into Kenya, they get changed. I expect it, I'm used to it, and I usually don't let it stress me. It's no one's fault. Rather, it's just the nature of doing work there - there's no way to anticipate in advance what the needs and circumstances will be exactly. So, we go in with a plan that is really just to give us a point to depart from.

This most recent trip, however, had one of the more demanding last minute changes. Again, no complaints, but it required the most radical adjustments so far, and it meant the first week would be incredibly hectic and the second week would be a bit more relaxed. But it was in the middle of that hectic week that I kept turning the same question over and over in my head:

What problem are you trying to solve?

Because I was so short for time, having to jettison every bit of unnecessary weight on this storm-tossed ship of a week, choosing between "mostly necessary" and "absolutely necessary" (since "optional" had already long been tossed overboard), I spun around this question night after night. Make sure you're trying to solve the right problem before you expend what little personal resources remain.

I could be trying to solve any number of problems:

• College credit for 30 or so students as part of their degree program
• Lack of robust collaboration between two organizations doing similar work
• Large scale orphaning
• Systemic poverty
• Lack of rich training materials
• Colleagues with serious illness
• Lack of clean water
• Feelings of personal significance
• The need to "make a difference"
• Faithlessness

And so on. Any number of problems I could be trying to solve. 

I wanted to dig deep into my own motivations - not just the motives on the surface that are easy to identify, but way down in the core of what my motivation was to put myself through these challenges. If, for example, the problem I was trying to solve was personal significance, then I'm wasting time, money, comfort, and sweat. If I'm trying to solve systemic poverty, then I'll never make a serious dent in that problem. It matters what problem you're trying to solve - the deep, secret motives of the heart.

What problems are you trying to solve? Are you trying to solve the problem of personal significance? Are you trying to solve the "problem" of non-upperclass-ed-ness? Are you trying to solve the problem of illiteracy or human trafficking or discrimination? Are you trying to solve the problem of someone else's behavior? Which problem(s) are you really trying to solve? Because it matters. 

If we're not trying to solve the problems we should, we're wasting our time and limited resources. Some problems aren't worth solving. Other problems are enormous, but still worth our efforts. Some problems are exactly what we should be solving.

Asking the question this way ("what problem am I trying to solve?") is not a radical departure from other ways to examine one's life. However, I find the particular wording of the question helps me to think about my life from a different perspective than other questions of self-examination. Perhaps that's only the case for people like me who fancy themselves problem-solvers. Maybe the better question for you is more interpersonal. For example: "Who am I trying to benefit?"

No matter which question you ask, this is the kind of question well worth asking. We have exactly one of these lives to live. I sure want to spend my trying to solve the right problems.