On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living

We aren't always honest about how difficult normal human life is. For the majority of people, sorrow, despair, anxiety, and mental illness are everyday experiences. While we have made tremendous advancements in therapy and psychiatry, the burden of living still comes down to mundane choices that we each must makelike the daily choice to get out of bed. In this deeply personal essay, Alan Noble considers the unique burden of everyday life in the modern world. Sometimes, he writes, the choice to carry on amid great sufferingto simply get out of bedis itself a powerful witness to the goodness of life, and of God.