Samain Moving Moon
I’m an anxious guy and I have a diagnosis to prove it: Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Folks will admit to melancholy and depression-I’ve done so here-much more often than to anxiety. In my case the over active anxiety gland I have probably stems most from my reactions to my mother’s sudden and very early death at 46. There have to be genetic predispositions, I imagine, too.
Anxiety causes us to scan the future, looking for problems, pitfalls, even catastrophes. Forewarned is forearmed might be the motto under the anxious person’s crest. It could have this MIA painting for its image.
As anyone ever in its grip can tell you, anxiety is no fun and most of us have experienced anxiety at one point or another. That closing couple of weeks in a quarter or a semester in college drips of it. Interviewing for a job or a grant. Testifying before a committee. Almost any public speaking, which apparently ranks higher than fear of death as a source of anxiety.
Anxiety is not destiny, however. It is possible to manage anxiety, lessen its stomach roiling and crippling effect. I take Zoloft which seems to modulate the extremes, making it less likely that I will descend into a full-blown anxiety attack. And I thank whatever gods maybe for this. It’s made my life much less miserable.
A major goal of living-in-the-move as an idea was to tampen down the holds and let the anxiety leak out in controlled doses. And here’s a revelation. Anxiety is good. In the right proportion. It’s not difficult to imagine that our non-anxious ancestors, those laid-back, flower wreath wearing hunter gatherers of yester millennia didn’t reproduce as much as those whose antenna were always up for the odd predator, the coming cold snap, the need to move on to better berry picking grounds.
Yes, I’m pretty sure anxiety is adaptive, a way of ensuring survival in a dangerous world. It can have benefits today. I’ve used it to scan the upcoming move for potential pitfalls, anticipate them and plan for them. The cliched plan for the worst, hope for the best would be a secondary motto, perhaps for another clan of us anxious folk. By doing this consciously, by talking about it with Kate, I’ve been able to identify matters easily addressed weeks in advance that would be teeth chattering otherwise.
The examples are many. I knew that if I didn’t start packing early I’d never get my books done in time. And I would be a mess of on edgeness. Same with running our budget out six months. Or, finding a new home. For some of you this is just common sense and bless you if you have it. In my world common sense intrudes because I’ve palpated the future and found a worrying mass.
This is not to say that I haven’t had my moments. When I got back from the closing the first of November, I spent time worrying about how the van would park at our new home and whether we would have too much snow and how they would get up the steps to the loft study and, and, and. Kate reminded me that we were paying these guys to solve those problems. Oh. Heh, heh. Yeah.
Anxiety, as I’ve come to understand, is neither friend nor foe, but a coping mechanism, probably passed down genetically and one that has its uses as well its abuses. It can help us plan for eventualities and, if we keep it in check, not overwhelm us.
