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According to the creation plan of the Almighty, human beings are placed in situations where they have to face hardships from time to time at every moment throughout their lives as part of their test.
Difficulty and sadness are integral parts of the grand plan of the creator. No man has the power to extricate himself from this life of trial and tribulation. This arrangement is to remind man of the fact that the present world has not been made as a place of luxury and comfort, but rather as a period of trial.
In spite of tremendous development in the present world, adverse conditions are still in evidence. But people, owing to their lack of awareness of God’s creation plan, fail to understand why this is prevalent. So, they continue to react negatively to situations, and by giving such responses, they prove themselves — in the eyes of God — to be failures in the examination He has set for them. It is situations such as these that are the tests for man.
Giving negative responses to negative situations leads to failing the test. On the contrary, giving positive responses to such situations leads to passing the test. In short, a soul of paradise is one who has opted for the way of forgiveness in moments of anger, who has converted negativity into positivity, who has converted hatred into love, and who has defused tensions instead of causing them to mount. Stress is another major problem faced by people everywhere.
Many institutions that claim to be able to help eliminate stress have been established. Anyone who, in their endeavour to de-stress people, asks them to stop their thinking process is only bringing on them a kind of temporary anaesthesia. This is, however, not a real solution to this problem. The real solution lies in adopting the right attitude towards stress—that of managing stress instead of trying to eliminate or react negatively to it. The Bhagavad Gita encourages us to live life with purity, strength, discipline, honesty, kindness, and integrity. Human beings have to elevate themselves through intellectual and spiritual development. The Holy Quran says, “To each of you, we have ordained a code of law and a way of life.” The Bible has many verses that may be relevant to the right path.