Why do we focus so intensely on our problems? What draws us to them? Why are they so attractive? They have the magnet power of love: somehow we desire our problems; we are in love with them much as we want to get rid of them . . . Problems sustain us -- maybe that's why they don't go away. What would a life be without them? Completely tranquilized and loveless . . . There is a secret love hiding in each problem
Interpretation
We often find ourselves drawn to our problems, as they provide us with a sense of purpose and engagement, similar to love.
In this quote, James Hillman explores the paradoxical nature of problems in our lives. He suggests that our fascination with problems stems from an intrinsic desire they fulfill, akin to the magnetic pull of love. Problems provide a sense of identity, engagement, and even a hidden affection, making it difficult to let go of them. Hillman proposes that our lives might feel devoid of meaning without these challenges, turning us into passive observers rather than active participants in our journey.
In practice
In a motivational speech about facing challenges, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of embracing difficulties.
Everything that everyone is afraid of has already happened: The fragility of capitalism, which we don't want to admit; the loss of the empire of the United States; and American exceptionalism. In fact, American exceptionalism is that we are exceptionally backward in about fifteen different categories, from education to infrastructure.
Mediocrity is no answer to violence. In fact, it probably invites violence. At least the mediocre and the violent appear together as in the old Western movies - the ruffian outlaw band shooting up main street and the little white church with the little white schoolteacher wringing her hands. To cool violence you need rhythm, humor, tempering; you need dance and rhetoric. Not therapeutic understanding.
Love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.
My war - and I have yet to win a decisive battle - is with the modes of thought that and conditioned feelings that prevail in psychology and therefore also in the way we think and feel about our being. Of these conditions none are more tyrannical than the convictions that clamp the mind and heart into positivistic science (geneticism and computerism), economics (bottom-line capitalism), and single-minded faith (fundamentalism).
Instead of seeing depression as a dysfunction, it is a functioning phenomenon. It stops you cold, sets you down, makes you damn miserable.
You don't attack the grunts of Vietnam; you blame the theory behind the war. Nobody who fought in that war was at fault. It was the war itself that was at fault. It's the same thing with psychotherapy.
The things that have always been important: to be a good man, to try to live my life the way God would have me, to turn it over to Him that His will might be worked in my life, to do my work without looking back, to give it all I've got, and to take pride in my work as an honest performer.
Hanging out with politicians and corporations is very unhip work. But I think that the U2 audience have turned out to be incredibly subtle in their understanding.
I drew it over my skin like a violins bow, No one would ever hear the song of my shame.
A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments.
Compassion is the key in Islam and Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity. They are profoundly similar.
See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.
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