“Let not your heart be troubled,” says Jesus in John 14:1. The words are a warning against allowing fear to rule the inner life. They do not, however, deny that pain or difficulty exist. So, how are we to cope?
The heart is easily disturbed by regret, disappointment, missed opportunities, and things we could never have. We cannot help thinking about them. But brooding can become a second prison: we don’t just suffer the loss once; we suffer it repeatedly in memory and desperate hope.
This is why calm music can have such a lightening effect. It does not solve anything, but it interrupts the anxious loop of thought. For a while, it lifts the burden and allows us simply to be present.
Wisdom begins not in chasing time and opportunities lost but in not allowing absence to define our whole life.
This is the question: can we make that present moment, in which we feel free of fear, more than a passing interval? It is not easy. Perhaps this is part of the truth Jesus was teaching: metanoia — the turning of the mind, or of the whole self — is not merely regret for the past, but a turning away from fear, regret, and absence towards the life that is actually being lived. That is where salvation lies: not in fear, remorse, or escape from life, but in the recovery of life itself. “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” — John 10:10
