\n
\u201cLord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,<\/em><\/p>\n The courage to change the things I can,<\/em><\/p>\n And the wisdom to know the difference.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n -Reinhold Niebuhr<\/em><\/p>\n Problems are a problem.\u00a0 We have problems.\u00a0 We always have had problems; we always will have\u2026you guessed it…problems.\u00a0 Many of us humans honestly spend most of our time \u201csolving\u201d problems or trying to fix them.\u00a0 It always surprises me when I can find connections to my vocation in readings such as this, as far as I can tell none of our books have been about death and dying, yet I find that dying is a wicked problem.\u00a0 I don\u2019t feel death is a wicked problem, but dying is indeed wicked.<\/p>\n In chapter five of Joseph Bentley and Michael Toth\u2019s book Exploring Wicked Problems; what they are and why they are important, <\/em>the authors discuss, when confronted by problems, we either run away, deny, or face up.\u00a0 \u00a0They define Wicked problems as those that cannot be solved. The NPO I have landed on for this doctorate program is helping my coworkers have more honest and courageous conversations around death and dying, or a \u201cgoals of care\u201d conversation.\u00a0 It is staggering the amount of people I am asked to have this conversation with, who are weeks to months away (sometimes days away) from dying and are surprised at our conversation!\u00a0 My friends, denial is strong, but I honestly can say that deep down we know when something is not right, or that our body is giving up even if our mind and soul say, no\u2026keep fighting!\u00a0 Or what\u2019s even harder is when there are days or weeks or even months and months left and with the problem of dying and they spiral deeper and deeper into despair.\u00a0 Lord, grant us the ability to accept the things we cannot change! Please!\u00a0 \u201cAccepting that we have problems and working our way through them can yield huge dividends: mental and spiritual growth, success rather than failure, the achievement of meaning and purpose. Most psychologists agree that the presence of problems in our emotional and cognitive experiences offers us important benefits.\u201d[1]<\/a> The others go on to give a list of all the good side effects of having problems.\u00a0 I may need to write them down as I journey with people through the wicked problem of dying.<\/p>\n We cannot solve dying, it\u2019s wicked, but we sure try to fix it, delay it, deny it, avoid it. How would I go about solving this wicked problem? I can\u2019t, thus my NPO is in essence may be just a way into the swamp, as Bentley and Toth describe, is getting stuck in the muck and mire, instead of high firm ground. I don\u2019t know about all of you, but the further into stake holder workshops and research, the more daunting and looming the problem my NPO was addressing felt.\u00a0 I find this book extremely helpful in getting me out of the swamp. It\u2019s time to go \u201cmeta\u201d.[2]<\/a> \u201cGoing meta means getting better at thinking, talking, and reasoning, and at almost any other activity: making decisions, persuading others, leading a meeting, praising colleagues, disciplining children, giving feedback, composing an essay, or writing a report. And that especially includes solving problems.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n Our way out of the muck and mire, aka…the swamp, seems to be looking towards technology.\u00a0 But as Eve Poole put it in her book Robot Souls, <\/em>we cannot program junk code into technology. \u201cJunk code shows up in several categories. The most famous is our very messy emotions, closely followed by our unshakeable ability to keep on making mistakes.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0 As\u00a0 noted in Wicked Problems<\/em>, having our messy emotions, our problems bring us \u201cmental and spiritual growth\u201d.[5]<\/a> Bentley and Toth address that technology cannot solve wicked problems, such as example they gave of Bill Nye the \u201cScience Guy\u201d who said \u201cI became an engineer because I think any problem can be solved with technology\u201d[6]<\/a>, but then later contradicted himself saying all of humanity needed to work together to fix global warming.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cBut in a surprisingly large number of cases\u2014especially those encountered in our daily lives\u2014the solution to a problem depends not on technological but on mental breakthroughs\u201d. [7]<\/a>\u00a0 In other words, threshold learning experiences as we encountered when reading Land and Meyer.<\/p>\n What is a doctoral student to do? Can we fix anything?\u00a0 Yes we can! But we must step back or take the balcony view every so often so that we don\u2019t get swamped!\u00a0 I am not an alcoholic or an addict of any significance anyway (i.e., coffee and distractions), but if I could remember to pray for serenity now, every time a problem comes my way, how much better off would I be, and perhaps those around me?<\/p>\n \u201cLord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, give me the wisdom to know the difference!<\/p>\n \n \n \n \n [1]<\/a> Bentley, Joseph and Toth, Michael. Exploring Wicked Problems: What they are and why they are important. <\/em>(Indiana, Archway Publishing, 2020) 49.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Bentley and Toth, 41<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Ibid, 41<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Poole , Eve. Robot Souls, Programming in Humanity. <\/em>(Florida, CRC Press, 2024), 74.<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> Bentley and Toth, 49<\/p>\n