Writing about life in terms of goals is fun, and this season of our podcast(http://disasterdigital.com/) has given me the reason to do so. Goals are both a piece of analogous gold, true to so many different parts of life. Today I find myself in the midst of another goal stopping event: anxiety.
It doesn't matter what goals you have slatted for the day or however many plans you've made for grandiose endeavors, when it comes, anxiety stops everything. It's a form of paralyzation unlike anything I have experienced in my life. I've been close to dying and close to death on several occasions and that experience is quite the opposite of an anxiety attack. Being close to death slows everything down; a million thoughts in 60 seconds, impossible strength and speed. Anxiety freezes your world, limits your mind to very specific thoughts, it traps you.
Anxiety is one of those experiences that cannot be truly appreciated until you've experienced and accepted it's existence yourself, firsthand. Before one of my best friends died, Aaron, he had been speaking of anxiety attacks for more years than I can properly remember. It wasn't until I experienced my own first bout with anxiety that I was able to properly empathize with him, hell, I hadn't even really believed him. As painful as it is to admit, in my head, I was thinking that he just needs to suck it up and deal with his shit like the rest of us have to. Those thoughts were in error. I should have been a better friend, more understanding, I should have believed what my best friend was telling me.
I'm not sure if ironic is the correct word here, but Aaron is gone and now I'm the one with regular visits from the anxiety fairy. Maybe people believe me, maybe they don't, my experience with Aaron and my own memories of how I reacted to it, or lack of appropriate action to it, limits how many people I feel should hear about my inner struggle. I don't want people in my life to worry, and I definitely don't want to give them a chance to do to me what I did to Aaron, or didn't do for him.
My anxiety comes from the world and our places in it. I'm anxious about how selfishly driven we are towards things that we don't need or use. The pollution of our planet and our lack of drive to explore the greater universe, it makes me anxious. Our inability as humans to agree on much of anything, well, you get where I'm going. These are just the macro anxieties, there are many micro-anxiety elements that branch out beneath each macro-anxiety trees. I'll save the micro-anxiety branches for another day, they will do nothing but further illustrate problems that I'm not 100% ready to share yet.
Today is election day, which as it turns out is a major source of anxiety (for me and a lot of people in the US & World). At times, it seems as though I can feel the emotions of the world, if I try. When those emotions run high, it feels like I can't turn them off, no matter how hard I try. Believe me when I say that I know how crazy that sounds, I'm even willing to admit that there is a high probability that my empathicness is nothing more than self-delusion. Just know that, self-delusion or no, I'm feeling a lot of something and I haven't found a way to control it.
Personally, who wins doesn't get to me so much, it's that we as a people have allowed and accepted this point in time to happen. It's that all of the important macro issues I mentioned above are not even on people's minds or coming out of people's mouths. I don't think that there is anything I can do, but it also feels like doing nothing is not an acceptable option. I don't know where I am and I don't know where to go.
"Freedom isn't free" Is a line I've been thinking a lot about today. I used to think that it was referring to the price that is paid in order to keep our freedom alive. Now, it seems to be speaking to the idea that none of us is truly free. Hmmmm another topic, another day. Let's talk again soon.
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