From dawn to dusk, life for some feels like an unrelenting treadmill—fix this, solve that, chase meaning, rinse, repeat. It’s as if existence is some grand riddle demanding constant attention, saying, “Figure me out, or else.”

But the “problem of life” isn’t real. It’s a mirage, an elaborate mental construction fed by the refusal to face one simple truth—reality doesn’t need fixing. The truth sits there, plain as day, but most dodge it like it’s radioactive. Why? Because seeing the truth means reckoning with it, and reckoning means change—real, raw, inconvenient change.

Let’s be honest: “I don’t want to see it” might as well be the collective mantra.

Why? Because recognizing reality demands involvement, and involvement comes with consequences. Commitments. Trade-offs. Most don’t likes the idea of dismantling the scaffolding of their life to build something truer, even if the old structure is crumbling.

Resistance persists. There’s a tendency to cling to the struggle because it feels familiar, even oddly comforting. It becomes a pattern—an endless cycle of spinning, chasing, solving, all in pursuit of a puzzle that doesn’t actually exist. Or, more accurately, one that both does and doesn’t—but mostly doesn’t.

To insist that it does, however, is like attempting to pinpoint the center of infinity. Imagine someone standing there, confidently declaring, “This is it! The exact middle!” Absurd, isn’t it? The logic collapses under its own weight, unraveling into the same futility that comes from trying to resolve an illusion.

And yet, while this futile logic unravels, the real answers remain. They are neither hidden nor elusive but quietly resting in plain sight, waiting for the moment when the spinning finally ceases and clarity steps in.

Sound harsh? Maybe. But it’s also liberating. Because the moment stop running and start looking, life stops being a riddle—and starts being.

This idea has unsettled interpreters of history, psychology, and spirituality alike. Warfare, poverty, and ecological strain appear to validate a world mired in perpetual crisis. Yet questions into the nature of matter and mind hint that relentless problem-solving chases ghosts rather than tangible dilemmas.

Take a distant nebula: at a glance, it’s a solid blob of “stuff.” But closer observation reveals swirling dust and gas with no concrete center. Similarly, the skin that encloses the body isn’t a boundary at all—it works with atmospheric pressure to prevent organs from spilling outward. There is no firm line where “body” ends and “environment” begins.

They co-create each other, like a wave in the ocean, inseparable from its surroundings.

This interplay extends to identity. The “self” often seems defined by roles: physician, sibling, citizen, friend.

Yet these roles overlap, leaving no unchanging core. Even concepts like the “instinct to survive” dissolve under scrutiny. Life carries on until it doesn’t; there’s no isolated survival imperative that explains this process.

This undermines the assumption that life is a riddle needing resolution. Neurotic repetition—like a hamster wheel—thrives precisely because it tries to fix what isn’t broken.

The Bible describes Jesus, who proposed living “in the world without being of it.” Critics call this impractical, pointing to wars, ecological collapse, and crises that demand urgent solutions. But others note that compulsive “problem-solving” often intensifies these crises rather than resolving them.

Jung’s concept of the shadow explores this: unexamined fears and desires manifest as external conflicts. Freud’s work on “faulty acts” similarly reveals how tensions beneath awareness create small mishaps—like a stone in a rushing river altering the current. The stone doesn’t intend to disrupt; the turbulence arises from the water itself.

Advocates of the “problem-as-illusion” view argue that reality is transactional, not adversarial. Buyer and seller define each other, just as knowledge and the known are inseparable.

The notion of a separate adversary—whether society, the environment, or one’s own thoughts—fades into the constant motion of relationships. Life doesn’t need to be “won” or “mastered” because the forces we resist are part of the larger flow.

Consider cosmic currents. A wave doesn’t stop being a wave when it recognizes its unity with the ocean. Instead, it ceases to imagine itself as isolated. This perspective doesn’t deny physical challenges—resources, health, societal wellbeing—but it shows that frantic problem-solving becomes destructive when fueled by the illusion that existence itself is the problem.

From this vantage, large-scale issues like displacement or ecological strain can be seen as reflections of unexamined collective shadows. These shadows interact with material systems to perpetuate crises.

Shining light on them can eliminate the phantom of constant struggle. Jesus suggested alignment with a cosmic flow—a life where effort unfolds naturally, like a river following its course. As He said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

This perspective dissolves the boundary between fixer and problem, revealing not isolated struggles but a frequency of interacting forces. Cosmic imagery of nebulas, the psychology of Jung and Freud, and teachings like “be in the world but not of it” all point to the same truth: separation is an illusion. Life is not a problem to be solved but an experience to be met with clarity.

When illusions of separation fade, the Sisyphean labor ceases. The stone rests, the river flows, and reality reveals itself—not as an adversary, but as an ever-evolving interplay of forces.