Pretend you are making the kind of toast where you raise your glass into the air.
If you were holding an average sized glass of ice water, how much do you think it would weigh?
While absolute weight does not vary, the perception of weight does. The glass will seem to be heavier in correlation to how long you hold it. If you hold it skywards for just a moment, it would seem light as a feather. Conversely, it would feel like a feat of Hercules if you had to hold it up and out until the ice had completely melted.
Back in 2007, in issue 09/40 of The 77% Weekly, I wrote about frogs and boiling water as an analogy for how we deal with stress. If you raise the temperature slowly enough the frogs wouldn’t notice (to their own detriment and boil to death). However, if you raised the temperature quickly or dropped the frogs into boiling water, they would save themselves and jump out. You can read more about it on Wikipedia.
Let me offer the heavy glass of ice water as an analogy with a similar moral: the stress in our lives, in small increments, weighs down on us unless and until we put the proverbial glass down.
The stressors in our lives won’t stop happening. But we do have some ability to choose how we deal with them.
Let me repeat that: The stressors in our lives won’t stop happening. But we do have some ability to choose how we deal with them.
Stress is real. Ignoring it and pretending that it doesn’t weigh on us will not work. Imagine telling someone who has been holding up that glass of ice water with an outstretched arm for five minutes that the glass is light and they should ignore the discomfort they feel.
We need to learn to release our stressors before they cause us more harm than necessary.
Spiritual-religious exercise for the week: admit to yourself that all the little stressors in your life can add up.
With love,
Rabbi Brian
