UNIVERSE WITHIN by Gwen Randall-Young

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it, and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
– Marcus Aurelius

AS I WRITE this, a world struggling with economic upheaval is now facing a flu pandemic. It seems that for the past year or so, the dominant themes have been fear, loss and lack of control. What a challenge for ego. All of its buttons are being pushed.

Here in the West, our lives have been blessed for a long time. We can take clean water for granted. Food, clothing and shelter are manageable for most. We have the luxury of playing with our food. When I read articles about exotic recipes and novel ways to prepare food, I often wonder what starving people in Third World countries would make of them.

We have access to medical care, immunization and anti-viral drugs. We need not fear for our families the way other people do in countries that are at war or challenged by warring forces within. So it is natural that we feel we have a fair bit of control over our lives. Then, suddenly, even though we invested wisely and took good care of our health, due to forces beyond our control, our financial future suddenly looks significantly different than we had planned and a potentially life threatening virus is making its way around the world.

All of this serves to awaken us to how much we take for granted and to our sense of entitlement. As difficult as things might become for us, it will still be nothing compared with the suffering of the people in underdeveloped or warring countries. It is far too easy to think of these people as belonging to another world – a world that is far away and disconnected from ours. Poverty and illness is the misfortune of their birth. We, on the other hand, are lucky. Or so we like to think. Ego likes to keep us separate like that.

That is all well and good until ego’s own world is threatened. Then it is a different story. Maybe we will lose our house and have to rent. Maybe we won’t be able to do all that travelling in retirement as we had planned. Maybe we won’t even be able to retire. Could ego sit and complain about these things while facing a mother whose baby is dying of starvation?

This is not to say we should start giving half our income to those less fortunate, although some would be good. What it is saying is that these “difficult times” may be reminding us to be humble. We are blessed with richness in our lives. We are not entitled or somehow more deserving. We need to be thankful and full of gratitude when times are good, and determined, strong and resilient when they are not.

I recently watched the movie Doctor Zhivago again after many years. It moved me then and it moves me now. Life was painful and full of struggle, fear and uncertainty. At one point, Lara says to Yuri, “This is a terrible time to be living.” Yuri responds, “Well, if our days are numbered, we must make the most of them.” Rather than focusing on all that was wrong, he chose to make something good of what little they had.

As well as focusing on all that is good in our lives, this may also be a time to reach out and offer help and support to those struggling around us. Ego tends to get so wrapped up in its own drama that it can forget that others are suffering too, maybe even more than we are.

Ironically, it seems that in times of tragedy or great suffering, the highest and best of the human spirit emerges. Perhaps these difficult times are here to serve us in our ongoing evolution.

Gwen Randall-Young is a psychotherapist in private practice and author of Growing Into Soul: The Next Step in Human Evolution. For more articles, permission to reprint and information about her books and “Deep Powerful Change” personal growth/hypnosis CDs, visit www.gwen.ca