Insight Problems

So, friends, I'm back at my desk.  We're in an apartment for now.  The house we shared is sold and closed.  We're looking for the home that will be ours together, that will allow us to make space for others, and that will be a place where we can carry out our businesses in addition to our jobs.  We don't ask for much, do we?

I've been reading David Perkins' book called Archimedes' Bathtub.  Perkins explores the dynamics of creative insight, particularly in terms of what he calls "insight problems."  These are problems that simply won't surrender to standard, linear, inside the box thinking and the sheer brute force of trying every possible solution.  Insight problems are the ones that require a fundamental shift in worldview.  These are the problems that require us to give reality a quarter turn and a second look.  These are the problems that produce the "Eureka!" of Archimedes in his bathtub.

Living with loss, I think, fits Perkins' description of an "insight problem."  I'm not suggesting that we can just think our way through loss and back into ongoing happiness.  No, it's not that simple--no matter how much we might wish it were so.  On the other hand, we can make some choices about how to think, about how to react to our feelings, and about how to solve the day to day problems that living with loss can present to us.

I was talking with someone who was remembering the death of a loved one.  We could have spent an hour examining those feelings of hurt, loss, loneliness and longing.  Those feelings are real and not to be denied.  But he had already spent a full day in such ruminative thinking.  We needed a mental snap of the fingers and a change in perspective for him.

Perkins describes four elements of normal problem solving that create issues when we address insight problems.  He uses an analogy that is too cute by half, but his information is useful.  

One element is that we simply have "to struggle and persist simply to cope with the sheer magnitude of the task."  

A second element is that we can experience all of life as a flat, featureless problem with no obvious way forward out of our pain.  There are "no apparent clues to point in the direction of a solution."

A third element is the opposite of the second.  We can develop tunnel vision--a common experience of the bereaved--where our thinking and feeling are narrowed down to our experience of loss and nothing else.  We can be so preoccupied with what we think and feel and sense right now, that we are unable to be open to any other experience.

A fourth element is that we can get stuck in what we're doing now, even if it isn't working. Our problems may "tempt the problem solver with answers that are almost good enough, but not quite.  It's hard to move away from them."

Perkins refers us to a literal "outside the box" example in the classic "Nine Dots Problem."  You are probably familiar with this insight problem.  If not, you can see some creative solutions at http://www.jimloy.com/puzz/9dots0.htm.  My point is that living with loss in an ongoing way may require the same sort of personal creativity that solves other "insight problems."

In my next post, I'll share some of Perkins' suggestions for solution strategies and see how they apply to living with loss day to day.