When our life is going on well and we hear that the world is a place of distress, how can we avoid becoming paranoid that problems will befall us in future?

Question. When we hear repeatedly that the world is a place of distress, then if life is going well for us, we tend to become paranoid that something terrible is going to happen to me tomorrow. So how to avoid this paranoia? Well, there are, I would say three different things. There is the information about the reality, there is the preparation for the reality and there is the action for functioning in the reality.

Pandemic which we are going through right now. So, it’s important to be aware that there is this pandemic. Now, just because the pandemic is there, doesn’t mean that we have to get infected. What it means is that we need to be prepared prepared to take precautions, prepared to have proper procedures individually or socially, nationally in place when people get infected. So, and then, we function with appropriate caution.

So, some people may naturally become paranoid. So, if I have not if the pandemic has been there for nearly eight, ten months and I haven’t become infected, Some people might take that and think, oh, then it is likely that I will be infected now. Some people may think that okay, now the pandemic herd immunity is coming, the pandemic is waning. So, it’s unlikely that I’ll be infected. So, both approaches might come up depending on individual disposition.

But overall, when the Bhagavad Gita says that this is the world of distress, the implication is to set a baseline expectation for ourselves. It is not to make a universal prediction for everyone. So, it’s it’s it’s you could rather than taking it as a, taking it like a personal condemnation, we can just, take it like a weather declaration, like a forecast. In this place, it’s going to be cold. So, does that mean we will experience the cold?

Well, yes, we will encounter it, but if you are prepared for it, then we may not be affected that much by it. So, the attitude should be that it helps us prepare better, not that it makes us paranoid. And, if we are not experiencing problems, what does it mean? It doesn’t mean that the the world is so, that the prophecy is false. Does it mean that our current experience is temporary?

Well, everything is temporary. Yes. If things are going well in our life, are things going to go wrong in future? Well, yes. The world is a place of duality.

So things may go wrong in future. And even the things that go wrong are also not permanent. So that will also end. So the point of saying that this world is a place of distress is not, that we all have to experience distress or that, you know, we can, by being smart enough or fortunate enough, avoid distress always. The point is that we focus on a purpose of doing something meaningful that raises our consciousness about the dualities of the world.

When we face problems, if we do not have a meaningful purpose, then the problems, overwhelm us even more. But if we have if we have taken responsibility to do something meaningful, then even the problems come, they won’t disturb us that much. That’s why the Bhagavad Gita, while it says that the world is dukkaleya, it also talks about equanimity toward both happiness and distress. So the idea there is become spiritually situated, become spiritually knowledgeable and spiritually situated. And then, both, we won’t be seeking so much security in our current problem free situation and we would not be paranoid about any future problem filled situations Naturally, we do not want trouble and we don’t have to invite trouble, we don’t have to constantly live in the fear that trouble may come because that might also become like a self fulfilling prophecy.

But what we can focus on is that we take up a responsibility for work, improving our consciousness, take up the responsibility for making a meaningful contribution. And as we focus more and more on that, then both, then that itself will become give us, give us strength, give us, give us the, inner resilience or we could say even to some extent that will give us a transcendence by which we will neither be dependent on the problem free situation not be paranoid about the problem, full possibility possible future.