Today, I got some good news I’ve been anxiously anticipating for the past several months.

And, in that moment, I realized how much stress, worry, and anxiety was attached to this news only because it was no longer there.

I noticed the burden first by its conspicuous absence.

In retrospect, it seems obvious that I was increasingly nervous, distant, distracted, fatigued, and moody as the stress deepened and spread.

Naturally, I’m wondering now how I missed it, how something can be so drastically altering my state of being without my permission or even knowledge.

I believe that life has seasons, to reap and to sow, for stress and for leisure, and that a natural ebb and flow is both healthy and expected.

Yet, I wonder what burdens we are each carrying, unknowing bearers to worry and anxiety, carrying what feels like the world on our shoulders, all the while wondering what it is.

I think the lesson here is a simple one.

Stress is not so bad, it can be necessary.  Worry has a purpose.  Maybe, instead of labelling these things as unpleasant and straining against them, swimming upstream, we can deepen our resilience by developing a better self awareness that leads to an acceptance of the season we’re in.

“For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

~Shakespeare