Life's biggest challenge

April 13, 2009

A belated Happy Easter to all. It will be a topsy-turvy year for many of us. So let’s bring the joy and euphoria of a new beginning to all our ventures in every season.

That said, I now know I am in for the biggest challenge of my life. I picked up a review book for the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test I am scheduled to take in August. I figured I’d sample a few of the math and science questions to see where I stood in terms of time needed to prepare for the exam. I looked at the first few questions. They didn’t seem to be written in any language I could understand. Uh-oh. What followed were a few moments of anxiety, angst and panic. Then I sat down and put in two solid hours of trying to begin studying for this beast.

Now I know what I’m doing for the next four weeks until classes begin at D’Youville. I’ll be spending a minimum of two hours a day with my standardized test workbook.

“Why did I do this to myself?,” I wondered.

“Because you were bored to tears and not enjoying what you were doing,” I answered myself.

“It’s like going from a couch potato to an Olympic athlete in a year,” added my wife, Judy. (She’s so smart.)

And so it is.

It was mostly business today, signing up for unemployment benefits, sending off a couple of resumes for jobs, getting an encouraging e-mail about one possible part-time job teaching an SAT prep class, getting some housework in on the side, and doing the aforementioned dance with the test preparation guide.

As always the motto is: Stay focused. Live one day at a time. Do what you need to do that day.

What a difference this is from my staid, predictable life of a month ago.

“I’m very surprised that I haven’t felt a sense of euphoria about being out of The News,” I told Judy. “I really thought I’d be jumping around and doing handstands. Instead, it’s been very melancholy, a very tenuous time.”

The smell of fear is clearly in the air -- fear of failure, fear of not meeting other’s expectations. Fear is very bad. It saps the life force. I needn’t quote Franklin Delano Roosevelt here, but it’s true: There is nothing to fear but fear itself.

Fear is the opposite of love. All the self-help gurus caution against falling into the fear trap. Perhaps daily meditation will provide an antidote to foul fear.

Author David Hawkins states in “Power Versus Force”:

“In the process of examining our everyday lives we can find that all our fears have been based on falsehood. The displacement of the false by the true is the essence of the healing of all things visible and invisible.”

If you’ll excuse me now, I have to get back to my review book.