Getting Through Dark Times

Coping with the anxiety

We live in a time of fear and anxiety. Only a politician will tell you that they see a bright and shining future ahead and utter some inane phrase about a time of great challenges but also great opportunities. We are surrounded by evidence of how our inability to control and manage technology has put our civilization on a path of destruction and how the societies that make up our civilization have become fragile in the face of the challenges. Those who seek to take advantage of the fear for momentary political gain do everything that they can to amplify it. The media willingly colludes. There is no way to escape this, but you can choose your own means of coping with it. If you avoid and ignore the media and live in a bubble of like minded people you can convince yourself that everything is going to be just fine. That good will prevail and that we will redeem ourselves and find a way forward. I don’t know how many find themselves able to do this, but I doubt that it is very many of you. Most people live in a combination of fear, anxiety, and hope. Even if you can relegate the fear to a closet with the door shut and locked, the anxiety is still there. “What if they win?” Is an unavoidable thought and the consequences so dire that anxiety is also unavoidable. There is no right or wrong answer of how to cope with this anxiety, only strategies to be employed when one is not overwhelmed and one can exert their will to overcome the negative thoughts. Some of you have a religious or spiritual belief that takes the load off of you. It is all in the hands of a higher being, or pre-ordained fate that you have no control over. It is only up to you to live as you should in this lifetime and leave the fate of the world up to the gods. To the degree that you can live this way and keep your faith intact, you can avoid some of the anxiety by continuing to live a compassionate life full of good works and hope for the best. Without this kind of faith it is still possible to cope with the anxiety by keeping the fate of the world, and the life of an individual in perspective. This requires that you answer some pretty big questions about what you believe in. Is there a meaning to life? What is the role of one individual lifetime? How big a perspective you can take is important as you contemplate these questions. Whatever you know about Big Bang theory, or the evolution of the universe, or the development of life on the planet, or of human origins and psychology can help clarify your perspective on what it means to be a human being living in these times and what the proper response is. And as with the person of faith, it is up to you to live as best you can, to be compassionate and to do what you perceive as good.

Still the anxiety will come. Almost every account of a saint includes a dark night of doubt, a time when the soul is tortured to the breaking point by fear and anxiety, and most of us are not saints. Our minds become overwhelmed by the negative thoughts. We focus on the fears and see the evidence that those fears are justified all around us. How do we escape this? If you are a saint, then you will surrender yourself and receive grace and a bright light will penetrate you and lift your soul to a higher plane of existence. Good luck with that, it has not worked for me. Instead I focus on how many times I’ve been wrong, and take great comfort in not knowing the future for a certainty. I think long and hard about what I can do that might have some impact, however small, and then do that, or not. Nobody is perfect. Very few saints or living gods walk among us. You are probably not one of them. Be happy that you don’t know the future and try to concentrate on the good that you can do today, or take a moment to smell the flowers, eat something delicious, revel in the laughter of friends, or pat your dog on the head. No matter what, if you can do some of these things every day, then your life is pretty good.