to break a butterfly upon a wheel

"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a gift to be enjoyed." --Proverbs

I saw this on a "whiteboard" & it didn't seem right (too memey); sure enough, it wasn't. It turns up on a list of "God's Little Instructions," whence i'm sure it migrated to the forwarders. There it is referred to Psalms 118:24, which of course says nothing of the kind. Google, though, helpfully offers an alternate concluding phrase: "but a reality to be experienced"--& this is attributed to Kierkegaard. (Alternately, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Or else Jacobus Leeuw.) It does sound like K. in that form... I would like to know what Danish word he uses for "reality" (sandhed?). It's too much like "life" to be a first-rate aphorism.

But i rather know this as something i got from Jung: "...but a mystery to be experienced."(I copied it out myself; here someone refers it to Joseph Campbell, who may or may not have cited his sources.) It may not matter if Jung knew he was garbling Kierkegaard, or thought he was improving on him. The meaning of this he makes typological.

Life-as-problem = Thinking
Life-as-enjoyment = Sensing

[This is not a direct opposition, & it makes more sense to me as intended to valorize the majority Sensing-Perceivers, who are often impugned by intellectuals of less common types. Since it is, alas, quite characteristic of them to pick up proverbs, & not quite perfectly, i imagine that is entirely appropriate for this to have become a Plain Folk mantram.]

Life-as-problem = Thinking
Life-as-mystery = Intuitive

[Jung considered himself an Intuitive-Thinker, & this suggests he found his first preference not as useful as he tended to suppose.]

In my view, of course, there are as many worldviews as types (16, or maybe 256)--none of them more true than the others... Hence the irrelevance of such a blanket pronouncement. (Far better is the Taoist's "Those who say, don't know; those who know, don't say.") For a saktra, or aspie, life is usually very problematic, not all of which problems come supplied with the wherewithal to solve them. Then it is perhaps a tolerable expedient to accept that patience-in-the-face-of-mystery marks one's most intelligent path.

Lojban LE SE DJUNO BEZI'O is how i would translate "mystery". E.g. that which cannot be known. (Or: understood SE JIMPE.) "Knowledge" in the Quran includes this: "And they will never compass anything of His knowledge except that which He wills." (2:255) Thus all lesser mysteries resolve in the single Greater.

.IUNAI