The Age of Anxiety

 It has almost been three decades since Marianne Williamson said in her book A Return to Love, "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”

We, humans, face fear every day of our living lives. We are either running away from fear or expecting it.

Fear is a normal response of our body to something that is threatening our existence. It has helped our species perpetuate itself throughout centuries. Fear makes us alert to our surroundings; it makes our senses hyper-alert to the threat that is nearby, either we fight the threat, or we take our flight from it.

When we are driving on the road and we sense that there is an impending danger nearby, our hearts start to beat faster, and all our senses are in hyperfunction. Our pupils dilate, to see as much as we can, and our digestive system pauses to put all the focus of our body on the surrounding. Our brain decides and in a matter of seconds our body sets on to put it into action. Then we swerve the wheels and pass the passing passenger who has been on his phone while all this happened.

But then again there could be another possibility; when we see the passenger, our heart starts to beat faster, and the same sequence of responses starts to take place, but we are going at a high speed and can’t see a way out of it, we honk on the horns, but the passenger is non-responsive. Our eyes start to get blurry; we start to get weak and tremble, and we lose a sense of where we are. That’s no more fear because fear was to be a protective mechanism that intends to save us from the threat, but here we are left at the mercy of it. This is anxiety.

Anxiety is a fear that is overexpressed, it is fear that is no more under our control, and it is fear that cripples us.

Experts say that we are leaving in an age of anxiety, for us present dangers are less than future imaginings, and we are constantly living in fear of what will be our fortune. Our species is in fear of its own because of its capabilities for distraction. We are in fear of what we could do if the next war broke out. We are in terror of the war in Ukraine not for the people of Ukraine alone but the whole world. We fear that World War III is in the air, and we could sense it. We have built up ourselves so great that we can erase our race from the existence of this earth.

Individually we have been handicapped from going after what we want as the fear of starting has grown over the years into anxiety. We have been raised to fit in, and we have been thought to adapt to what is expected of us not what we expect of ourselves. We have come to realize that we would rather avoid the pain of failure than go thru the pain of success. We are in fear of what we would bring into this world. We fear that no one would accept it, no one will be interested in it, and we finally say who do I think I am to even think that my ideas matter? Subsequently, silencing our inner callings and accepting what has been put forward from the world.

So, it is very true when Marianne said, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.” Our whole body knows the facts of our capabilities as we are all humans, the failures are humans and the successful are also human beings. But we would rather believe the noise of the world telling us that it is impossible, that it has never been tried before, that we should not put out heads out, and that we should not go off on a limb. All this adds up to our fear and we conform like the majority ending up like everyone else.

It takes courage to go against the wave, it takes discipline to keep going at it when everyone else is done and decided to fit in. It needs a belief so strong to withstand the resistance that will face us as we take off from our place. Like airplanes that use most of their fuel to take off, the same goes for us to use all the courage we have in us to get the sense that it is possible, that we can live the life we have always wanted, that we can have a dream come true and believe that we can do it too.

As you and I go on to live our life now, let us go after it with the enthusiasm, let us defeat that anxious feeling that roars in us, and let us survive this thru and live to say it is possible. Above all, as I wrap up my today’s blog, I would like to leave you with this quote, “Faith is the ability to see the invisible, believe in the impossible, and trust in the unknown.” So have a whole lot of faith, shake it up with some courage, pour in lots of discipline, and live life to the fullest.

                                                         Be all you can be. ✌

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