An old Buddhist text has a monk threaten to give up training unless the Buddha answers his big questions: whether the world is eternal, whether the soul and the body are the same thing, what follows death. The reply is a story: a man wounded by a poisoned arrow won't let the surgeon remove it without a full account of the archer. He needs the name and family, the height, the village the archer came from. He's asking about that village with the arrow still in him. He'd die before he got his answers, and the monk could get every answer he asked for and still be suffering. Suffering is the wound the Buddha says he's there to treat. The wounded man's trouble is the wait: he wants the arrow's whole history before anyone treats him. Your version is smaller. An aching back or a credit card balance can sit untreated for weeks while you work out when it began and why it keeps coming back. Whatever's hurting this morning, do the bit of the treatment you already know, the pill or the minimum payment, and let the history wait.