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Stress, it seems, is everywhere. Terrible news about stabbings, shootings, and crashes.
People agonising over healthcare, fretting about unemployment, troubled by tuition payments, mortgage payments, car payments or other costs.
So many people, it seems, are labouring to be at peace, groping for stable ground, living for the weekends.
So many people, even those with health and wealth, straining to be joyful and satisfied, seeing life not as a gift but as a series of unfair demands.
It seems that we’ve forgotten one crucial thing: Hardship is not the point of life. Stress is not our purpose.
We were not given this incomprehensible, stupendously amazing gift of being alive to spend it negotiating a ceaseless angst.
We are not here to carry on with an anxiety that turns us to addiction, pettiness, self-loathing and, ultimately, captivity.
Of course, we must not ignore suffering. Pain is not an illusion. Grief is real. Worry will wake us.
But pain and suffering are byproducts of being alive, not the point of it. We might struggle to live; we do not live to struggle.
We were not given life as a punishment, but as an expression of an infinite love. Remember: “God saw that it was good.” Continue reading.
Matt Emerson is an educator and lawyer, who blogs daily for America magazine.
Source: Matt Emerson
Image: Vera in August
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News category: Analysis and Comment.
