Dear Everybody
Dear Everybody,
I’m anxious again today. There’s too much going on in this world that’s disturbing, dis-orienting, shameful, embarrassing, scary, overwhelming, screwed-up, cruel, unkind, wrong-headed, ass-backwards, unintelligent, incomprehensible, disappointing, unfamiliar, confusing, unsettling, and crazy-making. I want to read the news, but I don’t want to read the news. I want to make some noise, but I don’t want to draw attention to myself. I want to be effective but I’m tired of wanting to be effective. I want to live a lot longer, but I don’t want to live to see what my imagination is imagining. I wonder when it will stop. If it will stop. How it will stop. The answer’s always the same: I don’t know. Like I said, I’m anxious again today.
My friend Todd told me last week that a neurologist somewhere said it’s impossible to worry when you’re being creative. That lines up with my experience, so I’m writing you this letter, and I do feel better. Thank you.
Bar
I'm with you, sister. I'm practicing metta in hopes that my worried mind will settle down--not to be in denial or oblivious to the suffering of us all, but to make it through the day and then the night. I just read Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost. In it, she writes: "Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't--and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown." XXX
Perfectly said my friend