I’ve heard many spirituality teachers say that a problem is merely a question waiting to be answered, or something along those lines. And for every question we have the answer already exists, and the answering of it will cause our expansion and the expansion of the Universe.
So I was interested to see that the older definitions of the word ‘problem’ included that question sense. Today it is more associated with the meaning of difficulty, but that didn’t become common until quite a bit later.
Here is an excerpt from the entry for ‘problem’ on etymonline.com.
Meaning “a difficulty” is mid-15c. Mathematical sense is from 1560s in English. Problem child is recorded by 1916.
Here are two more excerpts showing older meanings associated with the word.
“…and directly from Latin problema , “a task, that which is proposed, a question;”
…literally “thing put forward,” from proballein “propose,” from pro “forward” (from PIE root *per- (1) “forward) + ballein “to throw” (from PIE root *gwele- “to throw, reach”).
What a nice shift in thinking it would be to use the old meaning of a task or a question rather than a difficulty.
Also, I think the old sense of “forward” + “to reach or throw” lines up nicely with idea of reaching forward and the Universe expanding.