Survival and Love

One of the things I find interesting about living cross-culturally in Bangladesh is that every expat I know here faces a large amount of stress. The particularly interesting thing about that for me is how for each person it is a different combination of things that actually stresses them out. Having grown up my entire life in roughly the same area, I had never really experienced this on a grand scale before. I did run into it when I was in Botswana but that was too short of a trip and I was too young at the time to really understand it. To be honest, I'm quite sure I still don't understand it but I have figured out a few things in my years here. The most important thing I've learned is that it doesn't help at all for me to try to cram my issues onto others. By this I mean that if someone else isn't at all stressed by something I'm stressed by, I should not be trying to convince them they should be. It is perfectly fine and necessary to share what stresses you out with other people but you've got to accept that they have different triggers. The irony is that trying to convince someone that they must certainly feel a stress more than what they appear to since you feel it strongly actually causes greater stress to them. We are fearfully and wonderfully made in God's own image. I don't understand why God created me to feel frustrated and angry with some scenarios but not others anymore than I understand why God created my friends the way they are. I do understand that we are to love one another and part of that love is be there for one another. Surviving is something we do most efficiently as a group and I'm slowly learning to do my part.