Freedom is anxiety's petri dish. If routine blunts anxiety, freedom incubates it. Freedom says, "Even if you don't want to make choices, you have to, and you can never be sure you have chosen correctly." Freedom says, "Even not to choose is to choose." Freedom says, "So long as you are aware of your freedom, you are going to experience the discomfort that freedom brings." Freedom says, "You're on your own. Deal with it.
Daniel B. SmithIt's like I've had a stroke. Do you think I've had a stroke?"
"I don't think you've had a stroke."
"But how do you know? How can you be sure I haven't had a stroke?"
"What are the symptoms of a stroke?"
"I don't know. Look them up. Look them up on line."
"OK. Hold on...OK. Here it is. Do you have trouble speaking?"
"I have trouble speaking intelligently.
And what nags me about this is that the source of my anxiety was exactly what Kierkegaard says the source of anxiety is, and what he praised in direct proportion to the volume any person possesses: possibility. The awareness that life is a series of choices any one of which could be either aggrandizing or disastrous. That this happens to be true I have no trouble signing on to. Any who has lived past the age of ten knows that even piddling actions can wind up having big consequences, and that even when you are super-conscious of your behaviors you can't know how things are going to turn out in the short- or the long-run. That's the drama of it all. On the one hand, your very existence means you can and will change things in your life and others. On the other hand, you aren't God, so everything is always going to be drenched in uncertainty and doubt.
Daniel B. SmithEven the imperative to make choice after choice without clear guidance - allegedly the most nerve-wracking part of the profession - isn't exclusive to writing.
Daniel B. SmithThis is why therapists go to such lengths to urge their anxious patients away from intellectualization: The first step toward peace is disarmament.
Daniel B. SmithSingin' In the Rain might get you through an anxious week or two, but it won't get you through an anxious life. For that you need either a brain transplant (the only procedure of its kind, it has been said, in which it is better to be a donor than a recipient), a fully stocked bomb shelter, or a thorough adjustment of your perspective on existential risk and reward.
Daniel B. SmithBy the tie I arrived at the clinic I was typically so demoralized I could barely stand. I was twenty-three years old and I looked like Nixon resigning the presidency.
Daniel B. SmithThe bargain was this: Admit the anxiety as an essential part of yourself and in exchange that anxiety will be converted into energy, unstable but manageable. Stop with the self-flagellating and become yourself, with scars and tics.
Daniel B. SmithFirst, contrary to popular belief, Buddhists can actually be very anxious people. That’s often why they become Buddhists in the first place. Buddhism was made for the anxious like Christianity was made for the downtrodden or AA for the addicted. Its entire purpose is to foster equanimity, to tame excesses of thought and emotion. The Buddhists have a great term for these excesses. They refer to them as the condition of “monkey mind.” A person in the throes of monkey mind suffers from a consciousness whose constituent parts will not stop bouncing from skull-side to skull-side, which keep flipping and jumping and flinging feces at the walls and swinging from loose neurons like howlers from vines. Buddhist practices are designed explicitly to collar these monkeys of the mind and bring them down to earth—to pacify them. Is it any wonder that Buddhism has had such tremendous success in the bastions of American nervousness, on the West Coast and in the New York metro area?
Daniel B. SmithPage 1 of 1.
Data privacy
Imprint
Contact
Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.