Bryan’s Ramblings

I have heard the term “good problem” a few times in the past couple of weeks and I wonder what it really means. I’ve particularly heard it in the context of three situations that have been presented to me as “good problems”:

1. “The company has so many products in their pipeline that they don’t yet have the resources to handle their production.”
2. “The employee is so desired by other groups that he has plenty of departments to choose from to transfer to.”
3. “The baseball team has more infielders than they really need, but they are all talented.”

These all seem to stem from the idea that having too much of something is a “good problem” to have. I guess I don’t see the distinction. A problem is a problem. Sure, having too many products, job offers, or infielders certainly beats not having enough products to make money, being unemployed or only having a second baseman. Still, it seems that what are often considered “good problems” really aren’t “good” at all, but just “better” than some arbitrary alternative. Wouldn’t you rather have just a few really good products that make a ton of money and that you can produce in an efficient manner? Wouldn’t you rather just have a job that you are satisfied with and that pays you enough money? Wouldn’t you rather just have four really good ball players who each play a single infield position well and can hit for average and power? I would think so. If you are spending money to develop products that you can’t make, or wasting it on infielders who you can’t play, or constantly looking for where the grass may be greener, you are probably tackling the wrong “problem”, or at least not going about solving it the right way.

I think our society today lives in a culture where having options is a good thing. We make our own choices in this day and age, so the more options we have, the better off we feel. But when does having too many options become a real “bad” problem? I mean, we have so many choices of restaurants to eat at, stores to shop at, brands to buy, and channels to watch that we just take them all for granted. That’s what capitalism is really all about, right? A series of “good problems” to have? I think “good problem” is an oxymoron. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

Ever notice how some people never change? I mean some people go through life and mature and grow and learn. Others just sort of don’t. I’d like to believe that I fall in the former category rather than the latter, but it seems like I’m coming across more and more people who are pretty much the same as they were one, two, three, five, or ten years ago. Why?

The way I see it, there are four possibilities to explain this phenomenon:

1. Nobody ever changes. People may grow and learn but personalities stay the same and that’s why it seems like they never change.
2. Everybody changes but some people don’t forecast this change. They grow and learn but still act and appear the same to us because we don’t really know them that well any more.
3. We see people how we want to see them. We know or knew people one way, so that is how we will always see them regardless of whether they change or not. (This is similar to number two, but not exactly the same: in number two we aren’t shown the change, in this case we just don’t see it.)
4. Finally, it’s entirely possible that the old adage that “some things never change” is just a load of shit but we just all believe it because we’ve heard it before.

Okay, here comes some fuzzy logic based on these four completely arbitrary answers to my question of why.

I just can’t believe that it’s number one because some people, I think, do change significantly over time. I don’t think it’s number four because old adages usually turn out to be true. So I would say that it is some combination of numbers two and three.

This is why I actually love this forum for myself. I can write whatever the hell I want, back it up, make weak arguments, and come out believing myself. It’s genius.

So, finally, my conclusion to this whole mess.

I look at people that I’ve known in my past lives as a high school student, a college student, a working professional, and a boyfriend, a friend, or an acquaintance (and these are the people I’m talking about since people you see all the time rarely seem to change anyway because you see them gradually change if they do at all) and I wonder many things. How could I have ever been associated with this person? Why did these people exit my life? What did I get out of them at the time? What did they get out of me? Do I seem the same to them like they seem the same to me? I never have answers to these questions. I’m sure I never will. Still, I’m eternally puzzled by the present lives of past friends.