I have a dear friend who is going through a tough time in her life right now.  She called me this week and we talked about the challenges she is facing and the anxiety it is producing in her.  She doesn't like the way anxiety has taken over her life and her resultant insecurity.  She said she seems to want reassurance from everyone that things will be okay, that everything will turn out alright.  I think she was feeling unsettled because even though many of her closest relatives and friends do, in fact, try to remain positive by telling her that things will be fine she continues to crave that reassurance even though she never feels satisfied when she gets it.  So many times in life we look out into the world and the people around us and say make me happy  or give me peace  or fulfill me.  Now, granted, we often have loving people in our lives who try to do exactly that, bless their hearts, but unfortunately your  happiness, your  peace, your  fulfillment is not theirs  to give and in many cases they are still looking for it themselves. They can then feel a certain resentment that they are being asked to provide something for somebody else that they are still lacking in their own lives. 

 The truth is, and we all know this, there are no guarantees for anything in life.  People have accidents, people get sick, people lose all their money, their houses, their possessions.  Some people die young or have to live with life changing disabilities.  Some people in this world live in unspeakably deplorable conditions or regularly suffer abuse at the hands of those who may hold power over them in one way or another.  The uncertainty of life scares us, sends us scurrying to find reassurance that we ourselves will not suffer.  Yet it is impossible for the world or anybody in it to give us a "free pass" from suffering.  The happiness, the peace, the fulfillment we crave cannot be obtained from the world; it is something that arises from within  us when we have squarely faced the unknown, taken time to be still, and have fully accepted where we happen to be and what we happen to be experiencing.   The persistence we have demonstrated in trying to obtain peace from the world without, where it is not, can then be re-directed to the world within  where it most certainly is.  We have been shopping in the wrong places.