Another big one... a few of you @theaveragejoe have touched on it...
For me my anxiety ties in with my search for meaning. It always has. These are some of my thoughts, do you agree/disagree? Any of it feel true for you?
You know how dogs do that thing where they circle and circle, unable to find the spot where they’re meant to land? That’s us. Most of the time. It’s like we’re searching for a “Something Else”. A Something Else that makes us feel…what? Like we’ve landed, I suppose. That things are all good on this patch. We know it exists to the extent that we feel it missing in our lives. We seek it in malls and shoes and new partners and drug-fuelled dinner parties and gurus and self-help books. But still it’s missing. The fact we can’t land on it makes us anxious. And around and around we go.
And so here is my (possibly) contentious theory, that one that has guided me for some time now :
Anxiety is disconnection with this Something Else. It’s this lack of connection and clarity that leaves us fretting and checking and spinning around in our heads and needing to compensate with irrational, painful behaviors. It’s this sense of missing something that leaves us feeling lonely and incomplete and fluttery. When I fret that someone hasn’t rung me when they say they will, for example, sure, I’m fretting about feeling abandoned and lonely in life. But let’s pare this back another layer. I’m really fretting that I’m not able to exist calmly, happily on my own, on my own bench. My anxiety is my not being able to connect to this Something Else, my ultimate companion. Do you agree?
