Consider this question: When have you had a problem (excluding any current one) that was not resolved?  Think about it.  What issue that has arisen in your past never came to a resolution of one kind or another? 

      So far, I have not had one myself, and I have not heard of any from anyone else.  It appears that, one way or another, all issues get resolved. 

      Let us consider a few unpleasant examples.  (1) You have an examination coming up at school.  You study and prepare as best you can.  You worry that maybe you haven't studied enough or you have missed something. (What good does that do?)  You take the test.  You either pass or fail.  (2) Your child is very ill.  You do everything you can to help him get well, but his condition grows worse and there seems to be nothing the doctors can do for him.  You worry that he may not improve.  Ultimately, he either gets well, dies, or is permanently disabled.  (3) Your grown daughter is engaged to marry a man you don't like.  You are convinced she is making a terrible mistake and are worried that she will be very unhappy with the man, but she has made it clear that her mind has been made up.  She will either marry him or not, and if she does, she will either find happiness in the marriage or she won't. 

      When I was a child, my paternal grandparents and I were very close.  My grandmother was a kind of hub of the family; she made sure she knew everything that was going on.  I learned at a very early age that she was a worrier.  If anyone was sick or if anything was amiss in our household, she telephoned my parents very frequently - several times a day.  She worried even when everything was okay.  For example, when I was an infant, she worried that someone with the evil eye would look upon me and do harm to me.  So she bathed me in my urine to protect me.  She encouraged my mother to hang garlic around my neck to protect me from all sorts of ills and harms, but she still worried.  When I reached preadolescence, I came to the conclusion within myself that she enjoyed worrying, because it seemed to animate her and she did it so much; so I tried creating things to tell her so she would have more to worry about.  During my late teens, I wondered what worrying did for her; the worry itself did not seem to solve any problems.  As a young adult, I decided that worrying accomplished nothing.  I concluded that I could either do something about the problematic issue or I couldn't.  By taking action, conditions that might be worrisome were resolved; it was not necessary to keep mulling the issues over and over in my mind.  If bathing me in my urine and hanging garlic around my neck truly protected me against harm, my grandmother had no reason to worry.  But, I guess she wasn't certain that they were foolproof means of warding off evil.  It appears to me that worrying is autogenous -- an act that is autonomous in origin and independent of pragmatics or rationality.

From a rational point of view, we might ask, what if we cannot come up with an effective act to avert or solve an unpleasant situation?  Then the outcome IS what it is.  The only way I can imagine achieving inner peace is to accept whatever the outcome turns out to be.  I am not talking about an instinctive or automatic resignation; rather, it is a resignation to God's will or to Nature's insistence over which the human ego has no control.  It is accepting "what cannot be changed," when we are convinced that we are powerless to cause a change through our actions.

      Perhaps all of this seems obvious, but I have observed so often that people bemoan situations in which they feel trapped or oppressed, and spend hours or days - or longer -- in suffering agitation, often after establishing or volunteering to participate in the very situation they complain about.  For example, consider a busy woman who offers (or agrees) to bake cookies for a party, then later feels upset by the commitment.  She complains bitterly about all the responsibilities she has and all the work she has to do.  She may also feel frightened that her cookies won't be good enough and angry at having been asked - or angry at herself for having acquiesced.  Let's say she ends up baking the cookies and taking them to the party - which is the likely outcome of her having volunteered or agreed to do so.  Now, which sounds more attractive, (1) she bakes the cookies while all the time feeling agitated, miserable, bitter, fearful and/or angry or (2) she joyfully bakes the cookies with a sense of satisfaction and inner peace?  The latter is the inner atmosphere when one accepts the situation. 

      Note that the outcome is precisely the same for the two approaches: the cookies are baked and taken to the party.  But each of the two processes contributes differently to one's state of happiness and overall physical and mental condition.  We know that stress has deleterious effects on our immune response and our health in general.  We also know that meditation and inner peace helps keep blood pressure down and mental health up.

      An alternative would be that she simply realizes she made an error and that realistically she cannot possibly handle one more responsibility.  She could then call the coordinator of the party to apologize and cancel her offer, explaining that she was unable to follow through with her good intentions.

      To analyze what leads to agitation, let us return to the example.  What is the motivation that leads the mother to volunteer to bake the cookies?  If she becomes upset about that decision later, then she probably was acting unconsciously.  Was she trying to impress someone?  Was she trying to compensate for the inferiority feeling that she is an inadequate mother?  Or did she sincerely want to contribute and failed to remember that she had other responsibilities which made demands on her time and energy?  And if she acceded to a request, does she find it difficult to say no?  Is she afraid of hurting others' feelings?  Does she experience others' requests as demands that she must meet?  It takes courage to look inside and see what drama is being played out in there.  Usually, such responses come from the inner child which is dominated by the inner negative parental complexes, such as the critical father -- who makes the child feel guilty and inadequate for doing the "wrong" thing or not doing the "right thing" -- and the witch-like mother -- who makes the child feel shameful and who foretells a frightening (usually catastrophic or hurtful) future to the gullible inner child.  These seem to me to be extremely common compositions of inner dramas that result in agitation and feelings of emotional distress: the inner child who is attacked by the negative parental complexes. 

      The positive parents in us are supportive and helpful.  They are caring, make constructive suggestions and give encouragement, but they never put us down or strive to cause us pain or suffering in any way.  On the contrary, their efforts deal with building a stronger ego, encouraging independent creative growth, and promoting inner peace and tranquility.  In order to help the inner child deal with attacks from the negative parental complexes, we need a connection to the positive ones. 

      When we have that, we can handle the concerns of the inner child.  We feel good about ourselves, so we don't feel we need to make an impression on anyone.  We realize we have a right to our own happiness and act to promote that.  A person who has found the positive inner parents to support the inner child can accept that we make mistakes, we have limitations, and that all things are relative and subjective, so that we might disagree even with our closest relationships because of our individual differences, and that is okay.

      Conflicts are inherent in life.  "Shit happens."  The resolution of conflicts in relationships can be greatly simplified, when we can accept that we all perceive and do things differently, and each person's way of experiencing IS.  There is no "right" or "wrong" about it.  We can like or dislike what goes on around us, we can agree or disagree, we can feel comfortable or uncomfortable, but neither way is in any absolute sense "right" or "wrong."  This is how I experience the world; it is NOT how it IS.  I don't know how it IS; I only can talk about what I experience.

      In my experience, there has been no issue that has remained unresolved.  Sometimes problems are resolved peacefully and harmoniously, sometimes they are resolved with hostility and agitation, and sometimes they are resolved through inaction and the chips fall where they fall.  Whether we like the outcome or not is another question.  But ultimately, all issues get resolved.