Hello from Orcas Island, WA.
To help me cope with today’s brutal speed of change and our media’s anxiety-producing firehose, I’ve gradually assembled a few simple practices and truths. When I remember to use them, they help me stay calm. To keep the postings short, the list is divided into two parts. Here’s the first.
1. Change is constant, too much is stressful. Change is the nature of the universe. Before the industrial revolution, the pace of change was humane. Now it’s too fast for comfort. I recently visited the 4th Street area in Berkeley where for twenty years I had my office. I hadn’t been back for a while and the changes were so great I felt disoriented. I almost cried. Why was everything so different? Where were all the stores I knew? Surely, we don’t need this many clothing stores! Bette’s Oceanview Diner is now Oceanview Diner. I knew Bette when her restaurant first opened. I’d eaten there regularly for 30 years. It’s gone!
When I realized that my anxiety came from all the changes, I relaxed and became a tourist, seeing the street as new, without the feeling of loss (death?) of my past. Does our anxiety with Climate Change also come from changes that are too-much-too-fast, and from the loss of what’s familiar?
2. I am a real animal, not an idealized being. The real me is full of contradictions, good and evil, ambivalence, frustrations, conflicts, happiness, and guilt. And that’s okay. I don’t criticize birds for singing, deer for eating my roses, or lions for killing gazelles. It’s in their nature. Likewise, it’s in my nature as a person, as a human, to do what I do. I’m not a collection of “shoulds”, I’m just a bunch of “ams”.
As a species, we are what we are, we do what we do, from the cruel to the sublime. I try to accept me and accept what’s happening, particularly with our politicians here and worldwide. I do my best to understand and appreciate us — and forgive us. It helps. I know we are brutal, but I don’t need the media shouting out an endless stream of our inhumanities. Enough already! Stop it.
3. We are irrelevant to the world. When I sit on my patio watching the birds and bees, it’s clear that I, and all humans, are irrelevant — except to us. My patio friends enjoy their lives regardless of me, or other animals. If I get too close to the bird, or deer, or lizard, they simply move away. We aren’t special, though we are unusual in that our large brain allows us to create an imaginary world with us at the center. Galileo disillusioned us of an earth-centered universe. Will we one day renounce our human-centered planet beliefs? On a small personal scale, we care for and matter to each other. On the larger global scale, we don’t care, and we don’t matter.
4. Stop blaming. One of my pet peeves about my adopted country is the way we look to blame or criticize somebody when things go wrong. I’m not talking about standard political blaming (No, Biden is not the cause of everything bad!) Blaming encourages divisiveness and blocks us from understanding, and possibly solving, complex national and global issues. If we understand the system that leads to any event, we are in a good place to be more useful and constructive. I want to be part of solutions. Not blaming and seeking the bigger picture, is relaxing.
Our Culture of Anxiety comes unintentionally from the inhumanely accelerating pace of our industrial society, and intentionally from those powerful interests that profit from goading our fears.
We are all children of our culture so it’s hard to stay independent, but when I remember to use the above thoughts and practices (plus a few more in the next posting) they lower my anxiety and stress. That means a healthier, happier, and longer life. Yeh!
How about you? How do you build your personal haven? I’d like to publish your ideas. Please pass them along.
Thank you.
May peace be yours.
Barry
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