The Glass of Water

I saw this one Facebook last night, and thought I'd share it here as well as there.

A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress management to an audience. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they'd be asked the "half empty or half full" question. Instead, with a smile on her face, she inquired: "How heavy is this glass of water?" 

Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.
She replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn't change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."

She continued, "The stresses and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed – incapable of doing anything." 

Remember to put the glass down. 

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The unfortunate thing about this story, apart from the concept being true, in my opinion, is that it tells you what the problem is without telling you how to solve it. It tells you to "put the glass down," which I can only guess is symbolic of setting aside the stresses and worries of life, but that may not always be a good idea. Let's say you've got a big test coming up. That would stress you out, right? But don't stress out, though! Just set the stress down, and before long, you'll start to feel a lot better. Yeah, sure, you'll feel better, but you still need to study for that test. That's why I think that instead of setting the water down, unfortunately, we need to drink it.

God throws lots of problems at us. Or, at least, life does, but God created the blueprint for life, so it's still on Him. If a gun blows up in your hand, it's not the gun's fault; its the manufacturer's. But the problems of life aren't there by accident. God meant life to be hard. He meant for us to face challenges and difficulties, and worries and stress. God puts them in our path for a purpose, and not so we can just set them down and avoid them. God wants us to truly overcome our problems.

So, let's go back to the stressful test. Actually, let's call it an exam, because I also want to talk about God "testing" us, and if I use the same word for the exam we have to take and the trial God puts us through to test us, that could get confusing. So, we have to take this exam. Naturally, this is part of God's plan for testing us. The test could be how we handle ourselves in a stressful situation. Do we cheat? Do we break down and give up? How much do we study beforehand? How do we conduct ourselves during the examination? It's all part of the test. In this case, the stress we feel may be a part of the test, specifically, a paralyzing feeling that we need to overcome in order to do well on the examination. Or, the stress may be our own emotional reaction to the examination and/or the test. Either way, we have to deal with the stress before we can move on.

Actually, now that I think about it, setting your stress aside is an appropriate response to this scenario. You can't study effectively or focus on the questions when you're stressing out about the exam. So, you need to set the glass of water down, pick up your No. 2 pencil, and get cracking.

Well, okay. I just talked myself into a circle by bringing up an idea and then breaking it down and disproving it. But that still doesn't solve the problem I had with the story which is that they told us what the problem was, but they didn't tell us how to solve it. How do we "set down" our stress?

There are many popular ideas. Picture yourself at the ocean, take deep breaths, and put on some calming music. On suggestion that surprised me was physical activity - stretching to deal with immediate stress, walking or yoga to deal with reoccurring stress. Other suggestions for dealing with reoccurring stress included eating right and getting enough sleep. Even more suggestions and possible solutions for overcoming stress can be found online with a quick web-search.

Perhaps the point of the story wasn't to teach us how to deal with stress (set it aside), but to teach us the importance of dealing with the stress before it becomes a problem. We can handle stress for a little while, but the longer it goes untreated, the more it breaks us down. Resolving the stress quickly (using techniques the story probably assumed we already knew) can save us a lot of unnecessary grief.

I wonder if the same thing is true for temptation. The sooner we reject the tempting thought, the easy it is to do so, or the longer we entertain the thought, the more compelling it becomes? Does that sound about right? It sounds pretty good to me. Anyway, it's food for thought. This blog post is probably already long enough without going on a tangent like that. Maybe I'll blog about that, specifically, later.