On Anxiety

These days it seems that more people than ever are plagued by anxieties, some recognizable, some floating, and apparently there are any number of them available to us. There is existential anxiety (I’m not sure who I am), social anxiety (Will I fit in), status anxiety (Am I good enough), physical anxiety (Am I beautiful or handsome enough), and to top them all off, there are the chemical combinations in the brain that look for something to fear, according to scientists. A friend figured out a good, personal handle on this when he said that anxiety occurs when trust…at any level… erodes. I think this is as good a way to zero in on at least managing anxiety. We could ask: Is there a place to stand that we can trust, that won’t dissolve, disappear or disappoint? This question effectively takes care of the things of the world…They are always changing…and people too…They cannot help changing. They stumble; they die without our permission; they leave us.

Go beyond the beyond...

Eventually I think we have to choose to go behind the behind and beyond the beyond, and to do this we choose to become believers in something greater than ourselves, something we will never see but only experience in its various forms. Easy for me to say. I’ve been a believer before I knew what believing meant, but anyone can do this. Great thinkers can’t know for us what we must know for ourselves, but they can share their light. Ernest Holmes, progenitor of The Science of Mind, said prosaically, “Learning to trust will make us happy”…too simple maybe? But he also said that “there is a Power in the Universe that honors our faith in it…No matter what our emotional storm…there is always a something hidden in the inner being that has never been violated.” Words like these can only come from someone who has made spiritual choices and tried them out.

We live in a Presence that responds to us...

I have said that the world can’t help us, but we can help the world. What we bring into the mix is the capacity to think straight, to let reason take us as far as it can, and to believe that we live in a Presence that responds to us. It’s not magic; it won’t change what we keeping setting in motion, but our lives will become more manageable when we change the way we think about ourselves and others…really! This becomes a natural movement, part of the way we do business, not always comfortable but with us wherever.

Imagine what life might be like if we can pass through good times and hard ones, knowing we’ll come out the other side…because God has our backs!