The Pandemic Can Make Us Stronger

Right now this country, the world, is going through a period of widespread despair. You can feel the dark cloud that hangs over all of civilization. An evil malaise infects everyone witnessing unfairness, mishandled justice, and flat out deception. The spread of distrust has become a pandemic that is just as real as the Chinese COVID virus.

Many have become suspicious of their own governments. Even once trusted thought leaders out of academia and the fourth estate have come under skeptical eyes. It isn’t clear who to believe anymore. The ensuing mistrust and doubt has created a boiling kettle of emotional masses. 

Some will succumb to bitterness, steamed alive in their own skins. While others will become better human beings as a direct result. Societies will become weaker and others will get stronger, depending on how their people collectively meet with adversity. 

Actually, this is nothing new. It is an unjust world for sure. It has been so since the beginning of mankind. 

Each of us is born into our individually imperfect environments. We all have our own backstory, with cruelties, and injustices packed into the stream of events that comprise our lives. Just how we meet those adversities informs our personal successes or failures along the way.

One might conclude that this affirms our existence as nothing more than the total sums and deficits of our pasts. But isn’t there much more to us human beings than that? Oh yes, for if that’s all we are, then we’re nothing better than animal creatures. But we are superior. We are after all, created in the image of a Master Being, a Creator we’ve named God. And He does have a master plan in place for His creation. And as part of that Creation we play the greatest integral role.

All annoyance contains marvelous potential. Despite the trials and low spots, and all the painful bumping into the debris streaming by us in the flotsam and jetsam of daily existence, there is a way to grow from all of it. By not avoiding cruelty, and instead seeing our way through them with grace, troubles automatically then work to great advantage.

Let’s take masks for example. Wearing them sucks. I know that every time I put one on entering a store the thought arises, “This is a joke. You have nothing to fear. Look at you, fool! Wearing a mask like all the other sheep.”

This is simply one more temptation to become annoyed. And it comes from someplace dark. It is intentional. 

If you succumb, you’re screwed. Justify it and you are screwed as well. But step back and watch . . . then the pressure from that stress falls away. You become free of anger and the resultant mastery over negative emotional energy conquers the resentment. You do not play God. You do not sin. You do not move closer to death, but toward everlasting life.

Or how about the hypocritical politician—the “do as I say not as I do” official? You know by their actions that even they do not believe the hyped-up rhetoric concerning the dangers of the China COVID virus. What disgusting individuals they are, right? But peace and joy in this world depend on us forgiving them by not getting angry with them—watching, and not getting upset with what we see.

The key is to observe, stepping back from the thoughts that might tempt us to get angry so that something in us, Ego, can play God and judge. When we do that we do more than survive. We become stronger.

We do not merely grow despite these things. We grow because of them. With well-met stress, we prosper, just as when stress is poorly met we degenerate into self-centered blobs. 

The temptation to get angry is our key to a peaceful life. We MUST have it! And we must conquer it, or else die struggling against it.