In nearly every major world religion...

....or so I suspect, there's a great deal of focus on conquering anxiety. Those nervous moments, where we find ourselves waking up in the middle of the night or overcome as we walk down the street with an overwhelming feeling of dread -- all it means is that we're not trusting enough. Trusting in what, you might ask? I'll leave that up to you, as it's a rather personal question. If you were to ask me specifically, I would say trust in God. But then we'd be narrowing it down to just me and excluding that really sage turtle from Kung Fu Panda.



Do you see what I mean? No?

Ok then let me boil it down the specific example of me again: the particular set of religious-spiritual-cultural beliefs that I attempt to follow teaches that anxiety represents a breach in our relationship with God. If we believe in all-powerful and benevolent God who has set forth a rich life for us, then we should be able to realize that lemons can make lemonade and all that. There's a purpose to the seemingly bad times and "all will be quite okay." I would suspect that there's a great deal of calm that comes from being able to really believe that.

The difficulty is that as much as that belief has found a way into my life, so has the whole "master of my own destiny" thing. You know, because micromanaging fate is always super fun. Taken to extremes, these two bumper sticker catch phrases seem to represent polar opposites, but I would argue that that is only so when we believe we have control over much more than may be the case.

You really can't control other people, for example. Not even master politician Polonius pulled this off back in the day.

You can't control dumb luck: car accidents, brain clots, etc.

You can't choose where you were born, nor the race/culture/family that you were born into.

But, of course, we try to do all these things -- and in some cases, like avoiding car accidents or known cancer causing activities, rightfully so. The tension, bringing it back to my previous statement, is understanding what's in my hands and what's in God's hands.

I like to think that that turtle's got it down: knowing when to take the long view and short view on things. Sometimes we have to take the good times when they come. Sometimes we have to hold on to the idea that it'll all be okay in the end.

Ok. I'm talking myself in circles now, but quite a bit calmer. So, that's all for this afternoon. Until next time..