Artist Vs Butcher

Article for Bethlehem Matrimonial - Mar 2016

“Happiness is not the absence of problems; it's the ability to deal with them.” This is a quote by Dr. Steve Maraboli, a life-changing speaker. I was trying to find a good quote for the topic and guess this one fits the bill perfectly.

Life presents itself with a bunch of challenges every day for each one of us, one way or other. There will be nobody alive in this world without having to deal with some or other kind of challenge on a daily basis. Like Steve says, the ability to deal with them decides how happy you are in your life. Have you ever given it a thought of how you deal with challenges in your life?

It is quite interesting to think the way we react when a new challenge is presented to us. Do you generally spend time to understand the issue and try to resolve it or are you quite reactive in solving the problem? This is what will determine if you are an artist or a butcher in your approach towards addressing the problems in life.

If you’ve ever been to a butcher in a market or a meat shop you might have seen how ruthless he is with the meat. The meat is shredded into pieces within minutes of taking the order from you. There isn’t much of a thought process that goes into the activity and within no time you’ve a solution packed in front of you. Many of us are like this butcher. When presented with a challenge we just take the ‘knife of solution’ and shred the problem right away into tiny pieces without much of an afterthought. We don’t even bother to think what could be the possible impact of such decisions. Solutions thus reached are bound to create further problems than resolving it for good.

Now, think about a painter or any other kind of an artist. The first quality you’ll notice in artistic people is ‘patience’. It is this virtue that allows them to spend enough time as required to complete a work of art. This very unique trait in artists is what differentiates an excellent art work from the rest of the art works in the world. We do see people around us who face their challenges with an artistic approach. They are the ones who will first try to think what the challenge is and what are the possible ways of finding a solution for this. They have this distinctive ability to think beyond the obvious and possibly understand the impact of their decisions. They create solutions which actually solve the problem rather than creating new ones out of the solution itself!

It is quite easy to check which category you belong to. Take a few moments and think about the last challenge you had in your life. This could be something as recent as today or yesterday when you tried to solve a problem. Ask yourself what was the approach you took? Were you an artist or a butcher? 

Most often you’ll realize that the decisions you’ve taken in the capacity of a ‘butcher’ had a short life and created new challenges for you. On the other hand the ‘artist’ in you would’ve come up with a more concrete solution for a problem resulting in nothing but happiness.

Remind yourself to be an artist especially when you are sharing your life with someone to ensure that you take decisions in your life together. Just like a sweet memory you’ve framed and hung on your wall, may the decisions you take in your life be as beautiful for you to remember with happiness. Keep away your ‘knife of solution’ and take up the paint brush instead. Try not to chop away a single problem to multiple pieces, instead make a lovely painting of solution out of the whole problem by wearing the hat of an artist.

May the good God bless you with the prowess of an artist to resolve the challenges! Life indeed is beautiful!