It has become a custom that people constantly complain regarding their ill fortune and fate and are never satisfied with their life.

We all see life as a restless sea, full of wonders and never stable. However nobody can escape the violent waves on the surface of this deep ocean.

Freud said:

“The primitive man satisfied his desires in a better way than the civilized man. His life was free from mental anxieties and cares, and he did not suffer from psychic ailments. But since the advent of civilization, industry and urbanization, man came to suffer from serious mental illnesses.”

Pleasure and pain in this world, like positive and negative forces in nature, together perform their function everywhere. Opposed to joy and delight are grief and sadness and opposed to youth and vitality are old age and weakness. Everyone who sets out on this sea is bound to be drenched by its waters and encounter in the course of his life a series of unpleasant and painful events: failure, privation, the death of dear ones and many other afflictions of the kind.

The level and severity of hardships and calamities, it is true, is different in every age, but the universal principle of hardship and suffering is intertwined with man's life in all its stages.

As Allah says in the Holy Qur’an:

“Indeed We have created man in the cradle of trouble and suffering.” Qur’an (90:4)

Imam al-Sadiq, may Allah be pleased with him, said:

Indeed, of all people the severest of sufferings and afflictions are faced by the prophets, and after them by others in proportion to their degree of merit.

The Definite Role of Faith in Spiritual Peace:

A study of the history of human progress has proved that the supports of man's civilization and culture have always rested on the shoulders of those for whom the power of real faith had made enabled them to put up with the heavy burden of hardship and bare the pain whose negative effects were neutralized by the faith present in their strong hearts.

Psychologists asserted that the power of faith is as effective as nothing else. In the cure of psychic diseases and creation of confidence and inner peace. In cases where severe hardships shatter man's personality and divest him of his hope and will power, trust in God produces a profound and undeniable effect in a defeated soul. Failure, adversity, and defeat can never create a storm in the pure hearts of godly men and make them suffer despair and loss of self-assurance and self-respect.

The faith in God, is a medicine for any spiritual ills, it helps regulate psychic urges which are themselves the mainspring of man's spiritual afflictions. The faith in God gives a visage of perfect beauty to life, because when one has the conviction that everything does not come to an end with this life it creates an inner peace and makes him pass through the entire course of life with steadiness, strength, and moderation.

Qualities like greed and avarice, which are one of the reasons for anxiety, are moderated as a result of faith in God. The hope of great rewards and the fear of severe punishments make man refrain from rapacity and avoid unreasonable and uncontrolled passion for material things, glitter and ostentation. Thus, a desirable and serene equilibrium worthy of man's humanity is brought about within his soul.

Similarly, faith in the Day of Judgement and the hereafter removes the intolerable strain induced by the idea of absolute annihilation and extinction from the human spirit, for the person with such a faith is convinced that at the threshold of death the door to another world will open in front of him and he will enter an eternal life and its everlasting bounties that cannot be compared with the joys of this world. This faith results in eliminating another agent of mental anxiety which is the anguish of absolute nonexistence.

Faith not only cures anguish and anxiety from the human heart, it also protect it from being overwhelmed by agitation and agony.

Allah says in the Qur’an:

“If you have faith, do not yield to fear and sorrow, for you have an u p per hand over the others on account of this asset of faith.” Qur’an (3:139)

Allah also says:

...In God's remembrance and reliance upon Him are at rest the hearts of those who have faith and do righteous deeds. Qur’an (13:28)

And in another verse of the Qur’an:

“It is He Who sent down tranquility into the hearts of the faithful...” Qur’an (48:4)

The Qur'an views steadiness and peacefulness to be the characteristics of those whose hearts are rich with faith:

Allah says:

“Mental peace and security are qualities of those who have faith and who have not drawn a veil of wrongdoing over their faith.” Qur’an (6:82)

In another verse, Allah says:

“Lo, fear and sorrow do not affect the friend of God”. Qur’an (10:62)

In a sermon that shows the various benefits of remembering Allah, Ali Ibn Abi Taleb, may Allah be pleased with him, says:

God, the Exalted, has made His remembrance the light and burnish of the hearts. It is by the means of His remembrance that the hearts recover their hearing after being deaf, regain their sight after being blind, and become soft and tractable after being savage and rebellious.”

The state of people possessing faith cannot in any way be compared to the condition of materialistic and irreligious persons in encounter with life's vicissitudes and its bitter experiences, for the two are as apart as the earth and the sky.

Real happiness and spiritual peace can be found in submitting to the commands of Allah; the Creator and the Sustainer of this world.

On the other hand, the one who turns away from the Qur’an will have a life of hardship in this world. Allah says in the Qur’an:

“But whoever turns away from the Quran,1 he will have a hard life, and We will raise him up blind on the Day of Judgment.” (Qur’an, 20:124)

And this is why we hear about people who commit suicide although they enjoy the material comfort money can buy. A prove for that is Cat Stevens (now Youssuf Islam), formerly a famous pop singer who used to earn sometimes more than $150,000 a night. After he embraced Islam, he found true happiness and peace, which he never found in material success.