Phantom Portents

Foreboding

Apprehension

Trepidation

Catastrophe

Over…nothing

Specter

Delusion

Wraith

Raven

The adversary is uncertainty

Ubiquitous

Inevitable

Inexorable

Inescapable

If you’ve read any of my essays, you are likely aware that I am pathologically anxious.

Anxiety is sparked by uncertainty. It is a necessary human survival response when properly calibrated. Like many people today, dealing with information overload, hyperventilating pundits and posts predicting pending catastrophe lurking around every corner, those of us who are highly mis-calibrated tend to get worse. As time has passed, I have gotten worse. Much worse.

I have used the allegory of a raven, always with me, always finding a new potential catastrophe for me to fret over. When something is real and significant, the raven is happiest. When there is nothing real and significant, the raven finds something unreasonable and insignificant and imbues it with the uncertainty and risk of an existential threat.

In the rare moments when there is a moment or two of no threat whatsoever, the raven manifests an indefinable phantom. Like a phantom limb. The phantom anxiety is especially acute in my life when my eyes pop open in the morning. Every morning. On a scale of 1 to 10, my morning anxiety is typically a 15. The feeling of dread is debilitating, yet if asked, I could not tell you what I am dreading.

Excessive anxiety in people manifests in different ways. Some people are paralyzed by it and become perceived as procrastinators. Others, and I fall into this camp, are overly proactive. We try to swat out uncertainty wherever it pops up. Really a game of whack a mole. Professionally this served me well (managing Search and Rescue operation in the US Coast Guard where we are taught the 3 phases of Search and Rescue: uncertainty, alert and distress – truly made for me and people like me). Personally, it has failed me, sucking the joy out of life for hours each day. It has fueled physical ailments and dire thoughts…but it has also provided contrast that allows me to fully appreciate moments when it abates.

I have also come to accept, at the age of 58 that this is me.

This thing, this wraith, this defect, is inextricably part of me. I could continue to try and tame it, but all prior efforts have not only failed miserably, but have in fact worsened it. ^[1]

Mere acceptance, perhaps the best medicine if not the hardest to ingest, has provided me with a degree of relief.

I now see the horizon of my life and I do not want to spend the limited time I have left trying to fix the potentially unfixable, thus I, to quote Fitzgerald, “beat on, [a] boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”

If this is somewhat relatable, my purpose in writing it has been fulfilled. You are not alone.

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^[1] One notable exception, and one that I plan to follow up on were two intense psychedelic experiences – there is promise here.