A Society Addicted To ‘Fixing’ Everything Is Forgetting How To Let Go

The older I get, the more I suspect that peace of mind is less about solving our problems than about becoming selective about the problems we are willing to call ours. Some problems require courage. Some require patience. Others require us to stop pretending that our involvement is indispensable.

Constant Availability

This is difficult in a society that has turned constant availability into a moral virtue. We must answer messages promptly, explain our decisions fully, repair relationships we did not damage, and remain emotionally available to people who may not extend the same courtesy to us. A person who does not respond is considered rude. Someone who refuses to explain themselves is considered arrogant. The person who walks away from an argument is often assumed to have lost it.

We have made peace conditional on winning.

Family And Adjustment

Consider the family. We like to believe that our families are held together by love, but most are held together by the extraordinary ability of one person to absorb everybody else’s discomfort. This person remembers birthdays, manages resentments, smooths over disputes and makes the phone calls nobody else wants to make.

Indian families have a long history of treating adjustment as a virtue. It has helped people survive difficult circumstances. But an adjustment has a way of becoming a permanent obligation for the person least willing to create a scene. A daughter-in-law must adjust. A younger sibling must adjust. A parent must adjust to an adult child’s decisions. The person who finally refuses is often accused of changing, as though everyone else had been waiting for them to remain conveniently unchanged.

We admire harmony even when it is maintained by suppressing the truth.

The Burden Of Fixing

Workplaces have developed their own version of this arrangement. The employee who answers messages at midnight is called committed. The manager who takes responsibility for every failure is called dependable. The person who repeatedly rescues a badly designed system becomes its most important component, which is another way of saying that the organisation has discovered a cheaper alternative to fixing itself.

There are professionals who spend years trying to win the approval of a superior who has already made up his mind. Others devote their careers to correcting colleagues who have no interest in being corrected. Some attempt to reform institutions that reward the very behaviour they complain about. Persistence is admired in all these cases, but persistence can also be the respectable face of an inability to leave.

When Conflict Matters

There are problems that deserve confrontation. Abuse, bullying, exploitation, discrimination, and dishonesty do not become acceptable because addressing them is exhausting. Institutions must be held accountable, and silence can be a convenient refuge for people who do not want to pay the price of speaking.

But not every conflict is a moral emergency. Sometimes an argument is simply two people competing to preserve their preferred version of themselves. Sometimes a demand for accountability is a demand that someone else suffer sufficiently for our disappointment. Sometimes the last word is only the final instalment of a conversation that should have ended much earlier.

The Digital Appetite For Conflict

The digital world has made this appetite for conflict profitable. Every disagreement comes with an audience. Every outrage offers a chance to display virtue. Every public controversy invites us to announce our position, often before we have understood the facts.

We have started treating restraint as complicity and certainty as intelligence. A person who says, “I do not know enough to comment,” appears less impressive than someone who has formed a complete opinion in three minutes. Changing one’s mind is treated as humiliation. Remaining angry is mistaken for remaining principled.

The Cost Of Closure

Our need for closure is equally revealing. We want apologies, explanations, and acknowledgements, often from people who have shown little interest in providing them. We say we want to move on, but sometimes what we really want is for the person who hurt us to participate in our recovery. Until then, the grievance remains active, like a subscription we keep renewing while complaining about the cost.

Age makes certain victories look less valuable. An argument can be won and a relationship damaged. A colleague can be exposed, and an institution can remain unchanged. A person can be proved wrong, and our own day still be ruined. We spend considerable energy demonstrating that we are right, then discover that being right has not made us happier, wealthier or more loved.

Learning To Let Go

We are trained to admire endurance but rarely taught to examine its purpose. A person who tolerates everything is praised as strong. A person who refuses to tolerate one more thing is asked what happened to their maturity. We celebrate the capacity to carry burdens without asking who placed them there or why the same people keep carrying them.

The ability to leave something alone is, therefore, more complicated than it appears. It can be cowardice, indifference or privilege. It can also be judgement. Knowing the difference requires an honesty that is less glamorous than outrage and less rewarding than being seen as indispensable.

Some problems deserve our time because the consequences of ignoring them fall on others. Some deserve patience because circumstances may change. Others deserve to be left alone because our continued involvement is serving only our pride, guilt or desire for control.

Not every relationship can be repaired. Not every misunderstanding needs correction. Not every insult requires a reply. Not every problem becomes ours because we have noticed it. The wisdom of leaving things unfixed begins with a difficult admission: some problems do not need another effort from us. They need our absence.

Dr Srinath Sridharan is a policy researcher and corporate adviser. X: @ssmumbai

Published on: Thursday, September 24, 2026, 10:40 PM IST