A “problem” is not an inherent feature of reality — it’s a label the mind affixes to a situation when expectation collides with actuality.
In its raw state, life simply is: events arise, forms change, causes ripple into effects. A tree falls, a heart aches, a number doesn’t add up — these are occurrences, not yet “problems.” They become problems for you the moment your mind stands in opposition to them, resisting what is and demanding what should be.
This transformation is deeply personal. What crushes one person under its weight may be invisible to another, not because the facts differ, but because the relationship to them does. A “problem” is the meeting point of circumstance and attachment — where your story about how the world ought to work clashes with the world as it is.
And so, a problem becomes yours not when it appears in your life, but when you claim it as part of your identity’s territory — when you take the raw stone of reality and carve into it the words “this should not be happening to me.”
In that sense, perhaps the only true problem is forgetting that you, too, are part of reality, and not separate from the flow you resist.