ON ANXIETY / Part I (of many)
We all know that up there beyond the sky is an infinitely sprawling mass of shit. Stars, planets, comets, cosmos, just pranging out - colliding, exploding, constantly expanding. When we see a picture that shows even a part of that hugeness, our brains give in to things like, “wow”, because words fail and we have to just gaze in awe.
What if we did that for anxiety? When saying things like, “I have anxiety”, “that’s my anxiety”, or even more, “I am anxious”, to describe often unbearable feelings, it’s possible that we mislead ourselves into believing we’re experiencing a still thing when we’re not.
Anxiety is one word to describe an almost impossible to number collaboration of systems inside the body that never stops moving: firing neurons, zinging nervous systems - the patterns of which we inherit - and thumping blood flow to name a few.
The word itself is wisdom beyond anything we can logically understand. Not a slur on yourself, a weakness, or any kind of “wrongness”. Instead, it captures an encounter with a lifetime of experiences, collecting here and now, for their current dazzling display. Whilst you feel like a shit show of unbearable sensations you’re actually a furiously wonderful delight of history, heritage, and real-time experience.
Amazing advances in therapeutic technique can help us sit with difficult feelings. First, though, we have to turn to them and to understand that they came here... Not asking to be explained, or hoping to be healed, fixed, or solved. Just to exist. And for that to be enough.
They came here to have our gaze on them... This kooky collection of sensations is exactly what it feels like to be alive right now. It’s the work of wonder that you even had the concoction of life in the run-up to this moment. Seven billion creatures just like you and yet here you are having an entirely unique experience. Just like the most awesome constellation of nebulae, you are magnificent. You don’t have to do anything to earn that. Feelings of anxiety don’t ever have to be changed, or rushed, maybe just wondered at.
