It's weird how opportunities are problems, just as problems are problems. Both sit there demanding responses, and both subject us to strain -- decisions clamor to be made, choices to be chosen to the exclusion & abandonment of other choices. Alternatives are always vague to some degree, and any option involves the risk that another would have been something called better. So genuine problems to be solved and new possibilites to be realized  both plunge us into anxiety of pretty much the same type.

The outcomes differ in fundamental ways. Solving a problem avoids a rotten result; it's oriented away from an awful past. Fulfilling a new possibility opens life outward in new ways toward a happier future. The two could hardly be any more different -- they're almost polar opposites.

Yet the process of getting there tends to be the same angsty struggle with risk and uncertainty and the potential for disappointed hopes. This energy runs in politics, for example, both when society is working to iron out kinks and when it's time to build new goodness. It's there in dieting and physical fitness programs, in love & romance, in raising kids. It's fucking everywhere.

Lots of happy-talk flutters about some golden process of letting go of the fear and getting zen with the now and whatnot, and maybe Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Freakin' Llama actually live that out. But most of us struggle as much to welcome gain as we do to resolve ourselves to loss. As much focus as gets lavished on all the values in play and which will emerge as the most important, the underlying process is the real felt reality of the thing.

I may be wrong.