Contrary to the ravings of a thousand and one self-help gurus, personal coaches, and con-men, the experience of stress is NOT an indictment. As an evolutionary biologist and they’ll tell you: there are stressors. Some are circumstantial, some are physical, some are interpersonal, and some are mental.
No, stress is not the smoking gun that we believe in a permanent or independent self, that we’re arrogant, cowardly, or faithless. Our visceral response to stress evolved as an evolutionary mechanism to peril to keep us alive. To paraphrase Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ph.D. “the universe is trying to kill us” and biology has evolved mechanisms to respond to the peril appropriately. Lifeforms born without a stress response typically did not live long enough to reproduce and pass on their genetic traits.
No sentient being is a stranger to the stressors of not getting what they want when they want it, not keeping what they like for as long as they please, and enduring that which they do not want. Birth is stressful, illness is stressful, and dying is stressful. Since stress (from the petty to the existential) is more of a rule than an exception the wise develop strategies to deal with it: circumstantial, physically, interpersonally, and mentally. That is why the Buddha taught meditation.
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