Is Stress a Part of Life?

I wonder: Does anyone live a stress-free life?

I can’t say for sure, but of one thing I’m relatively certain: No mature adult has a challenge-free life.

Most of us carry responsibilities, and responsibilities come with challenges.

[If there’s such a thing as a mature adult who carries no responsibilities, I’d bet that his/her lack of responsibilities is what presents a challenge. Everyone likes to feel needed and useful; and it’s difficult to feel useful if you’re shouldering some responsibility to others.

Bottom line: We all carry something.]

But are challenges synonymous with stress?

Not necessarily. Stress is an optional reaction to challenges.

Work becomes drudgery and exertion becomes stress when we don’t see meaningful purpose in what we’re doing.

When we’re working hard for a meaningful objective, we can feel at peace and the stress seems to ease. So meaning is essential.

But the world doesn’t show its meaning at first blush. You need to peer beneath the surface, to pro-actively refine the way you see your world, if you want to view your day in a purposeful light.

By that, I mean we need to see our daily lives as filled with opportunities to fulfill G-d’s intent in our creation. There’s no greater meaning than that.

But it’s not easy. The struggle for a meaningful life is hand-to-hand combat, fighting for every inch, in vanquishing life’s facade so that we can connect with its real beauty, its Holiness.

In this week’s Torah portion we read the famous episode of Jacob wrestling with an angel.

Our Rabbis saw this as a depiction of our (Jacob is “us”) struggle to conquer life’s shallowness, the veneer with which G-d papered his beautiful world.

We triumph when we can finally recognize the Divine beauty in our daily lives.

Interestingly, the Scripture describes this wrestling match as being a tussle that ‘kicked up dust’. And the Talmud tells us that this dust rose high, so high that it “reached the [anthropomorphic] Heavenly Throne”.

Why the focus on dust?

Dust in the air obscures your vision; it distorts your perception.

That’s what the struggle was about: Cutting through life’s static to find meaning.

So the dust is critical, because it represents the struggle itself.

And that struggle strikes directly at the Heavenly Throne.

It’s what life is all about.