Why are there obstacles in your life?

Sometimes it can seem that there are obstacles in life that hinder you from reaching a goal. And in a general sense this must be true; as in economics so in life: the resources to apply to the time available, well it turns out that both are finite. We know this.

But as the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips has pointed out, sometimes the obstacle reveals something about what we want that perhaps we hadn't thought about.

I have a practical example below that relates to me. I would like to turn off my devices each day for a fixed, and preferably, long period of time.

No email, no texts, no Facebook, no LinkedIn, no Twitter; so that I can get on with, and spend time doing, the things I want to spend time on: WITHOUT INTERRUPTION.

Then I can really hope to understand the use of the sign below. Why do I need to have this obstacle of interruption constantly breaking in? I don't know. Perhaps I need to feel wired into the world. I need to think about this some more. I suspect that this obstacle may be common for people in postwork.

Retirement: you won't know what it's like until you get there.