Resolving Anxiety
By Charles Rush
March 3, 2002
Lk. 12: 22-32
got these this week. Actual directions on various products
On
a Sears hairdryer: Do not use while sleeping (Ha! that's the only time I have
to work on my hair.)
On a bag of Fritos: You could be
a winner! No purchase necessary. Details inside. (I guess that is the
shoplifter special?)
On
some Swanson frozen dinners: "Serving suggestion: Defrost." (but it's
"just" a suggestion).
On
packaging for a Rowenta iron: "Do not iron clothes on body." (but
wouldn't this save me more time?)
On
Boots Children's Cough Medicine: "Do not drive a car or operate machinery
after taking this medication." (We could do a lot to reduce the rate of
construction accidents if we could just get those 5-year-olds with head colds
off those forklifts.)
On
a Japanese food processor: "Not to be used for the other use." (Help
me on this. I'm a bit curious. And if this has to be answered by Dr. Ruth, I
don't want to know.)
On
a child's superman costume: "Wearing of this garment does not enable you
to fly." (I don't blame the company. I blame the parents for this one.)
On
a Swedish chainsaw: "Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands or
genitals." (Oh my God. Was there a lot of this happening somewhere?)
And there are some things that ought
to come with a big label that don't. Like
the Garden State Parkway for those poor new-comers that actually think it will
be faster than local roads. “Warning: Proper use of this road will elevate
stress and anxiety.”
I once asked my good friend Jim
O'Brien about stress. My physician had given me a list of stress factors in my
life; The Doctor's recommendation was that I should reduce some of these stress
factors so that I would be in better health. I was listing them off to
Therapist O'Brien. I said, “having too many financial obligations, being
responsible for too many people, living in this part of the country, having too
many people that depend on me, being in the public eye, and dealing with
chronic situations, death, and loss.”
“In other words,” said Jim, “he
wants you understand that it is stressful to be a Minister in New Jersey.”
“Yeah,” I guess so.
“You didn't pay him for this
information I hope?”
“I think it is covered by
insurance.”
“Now that you have this valuable
information, do you plan to do anything different with your career?”
“No”
“Good, then get out of here, I have
a paying patient waiting in the lobby.”
I said, “Jim, how bout a little
hug?”
It is true that most of the anxiety
we have generated, we brought on ourselves to begin with. And it is unbecoming
to complain about that kind of anxiety to be sure.
Someone sent me a parable that is
making the rounds in the Financial district that makes this point.
A boat docked in a tiny Costa Rican village. An American tourist complimented the Costa Rican fisherman on the
quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.
"Not very long," answered the Costa Rican.
"But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?"
asked the American.
The Costa Rican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet
his needs and those of his family.
The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your
time?"
"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a
siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends,
have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs...I have a full
life."
The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Wharton and I can
help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the
extra fish you catch. With the extra
revenue, you can buy a bigger boat. With the extra money the larger boat will
bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an
entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle-man, you can
negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own
plant. You can then leave this little
village and move to San Jose, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there
you can direct your huge enterprise."
"How long would that take?" asked the Costa Rican.
"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American.
"And after that?"
“Afterwards? That's when it
gets really interesting," answered the American. "When your business
gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make millions!"
“Millions? Really? And after that?"
"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near
the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta
with your wife, and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your
friends!"
It is true that a great deal of the
anxiety we endure is a result of the tread mill we have put ourselves on and
then complain about. The obvious solution is the very one we are unwilling to
entertain. Jesus used to say, “You/We already have our reward.” In other words,
‘it is what it is'. At the very least, stop whining about it.
But there is a deeper anxiety that
affects all of us, regardless of whether we are powerful or marginal, and that
is the anxiety our finitude. It manifests itself not only in the awareness that
we will one day die but perhaps most powerfully around us in the
awareness that we cannot control the events of our lives the way that we
would like to control them.
And for most of us here that is a
real issue because we are willing and able to exert quite a lot of control. We
have largely created our lives and we can shape the destiny for our children.
We have succeeded. We can work the system and get it to pump out perq's for us
and our families. Many of us have taken ourselves by the bootstraps and made a
life for ourselves that our parents would never have imagined and our high
school friends wouldn't believe if they knew all the details. We have
controlled quite a lot, shaped quite a lot. But we are not inviolable.
As a community, Summit has had quite
a lot of reminders about this in the last several months. I think of Todd
Ranke's funeral, one of the 11 of our neighbors and friends in town who died on
September 11th. Watching
Todd's kids walk down the aisle at Central Presbyterian Church, watching his
sisters all walk in together, watching his wife who just adored him, walk in
broken-hearted and numb. He was such a talent, such a good hearted man, so full
of joy and Tom Foolery. I don't think there was a woman in the Church that day that
didn't think to herself, “I don't know how Debbie Ranke is going to carry on.
(I don't think I could).” There was not a single person that works in the
financial district who didn't think to themselves, “but for the grace of
God, this could be my funeral.”
I think of Amanda Crosby's funeral.
John and Betsy walking into the service for the funeral of their 28-year-old
daughter, a life so full of promise, so full of vitality. A huge turn out
across town to support them, but I bet there wasn't a single person in the
congregation that day that didn't say to themselves, “I don't know how you
could really live through such a pain as John and Betsy are living through-
losing a child. I don't know if I could take that.”
I think of the funeral for Mary
Snieckus last week, a mother in her mid-40's, worked on the make-up for all our
plays, helped bring the ‘Character Counts' curriculum to Franklin Elementary
School, taught Religious Education at St. Theresa's, an advocate in the good
sense in our school's, had four children- always on the sidelines at the games.
Watching her husband Pete walk into the St. Theresa's for her funeral with
those four kids, hugging all of them, talking them through it- from 8 years old
to middle school to a High School senior… Pete got up and talked about how much
he loved his wife and what a great relationship they had… I don't think there
was a man in that Church that didn't think to himself, “I don't know if I
could go through what he is going through.”
Each of us in our own ways, through
compassion for what our neighbors and friends are going through, through
identification,… we come face to face with our finitude. We have
to deal with the very unpleasant reality that we can't control everything and
that some of the most important things that will happen to us will be difficult
and things we can only respond to. We stand for a moment on the brink of the
precipice and look over into the abyss of death. It is dizzying. It is fearful
in a primal way. You have come face to face with the Anxiety that Soren
Kierkegaard described so fully in his philosophical and theological writings.
Kierkegaard said that we have
essentially three different responses to this fundamental anxiety in the face
of our finitude and mortality. The first is the response of pleasure. It is the
impulse to inoculate ourselves with material comfort and make our life as
comfortable as possible. Pleasure, he noted, is really never sated. So we keep
building more, bigger additions, we keep acquiring more, better layers of
insulation. Because there is something about the very act of acquiring that
momentarily dissolves anxiety. This is the Mall mentality of living. Are you
sad? Bored? Empty?… go shop. It doesn't last but it really is wonderfully
distracting to get a new outfit and a cookie from David's with a Lattee to go…
A new Land Rover?… a second house to decorate and manage- that is a project
that can keep us busy for quite a while. It really does work pretty well for a
short while.
Obviously, Kierkegaard, being a philosopher,
had mostly contempt for this option but he lived in the 1800's and like most
philosophers he didn't really know serious money or serious shopping. I think
he might be more impressed today.
The second option was the
life of the Aesthete. That is the life of culture- Art, Drama, Opera,
Literature. It allows us to delve into the inner realms of the human psyche,
explore it's concerns and contradictions, and then leave with only limited
engagement. That is the way that great Art functions. Think of the character
Rashkolinikov in Doestoevsky's Crime and Punishment. You can momentarily
enter his exhilarations and fears at getting caught in the perfect crime, but
you can put the book down and resume your life. Great Art mimics life, engages
our anxieties… but then we can leave it. We can discuss it, which adds a layer
of critical distance from reality itself and gives us a degree of control that
we don't usually possess when we engage reality directly. It is reality once
removed. It really does work for a while because we can work things through,
consider them, engage them- without all the distractions and numbness that
attends real crises.
The final option is the religious
option. And that requires a “leap of faith”. The “leap of faith”
is just that because there is no certitude. And when we are actually going
through moments of deep grief, we do not feel, at that moment, like life is
actually worth our deep investment. We do not feel anything but a leaden
detachment, almost like we are watching our very own lives while we are living
them. And even after some of the leaden numbness begins to dissolve, we still
need a leap in order to delve into the goodness of existence, the wonder of
living, that there is an ultimate meaning to our lives, that we have a purpose
for our living, that love is more fundamental than tragedy, injustice, and
sorrow.
A lot of times, I find myself at
funerals simply reminding people of things: of hope, of meaning, of goodness,
and love. They cannot feel those things at the moment. It is not possible. But
we need to be reminded because there will come a time when enough feeling comes
back that they will begin to have an internal dialogue with themselves about
how they are going to live the rest of their lives. Will they just adopt a
hardened self that keeps it's distance, avoids intimacy but also avoids pain?
Will they live out of their cynicism? - and there is plenty of evidence to
support the plausibility of just being cynical for our remaining years. Or will
they leap back into life, a leap that appears always difficult, sometimes
almost comical, certainly risky and fear-filled- Anxious in a big way?
And these leaps are rarely, if ever,
once and for all jumps. We make them, then we pull back, we become more open to
life, more vulnerable, then we lapse into self-protection and hide.
Kierkegaard himself was a much
better dispenser of advice than he was a faithful guide. When he was around 30
he fell in love with a young girl of 18 named Christina. Apparently there was
some mutual affection, though we can't know all the particulars because we only
have his diary notes.
Soren felt that she was too young
for him. Or, the way that he put it, he was too old for her. And he didn't
think that he was attractive enough. He didn't think that he was a person of
enough position to deserve her. He wrangled with himself internally, deeply
desiring her affection, building up the wonder that her love would bring him.
But he wouldn't actually do anything about it because he would also ridicule
himself about how unworthy he was, about how he would be rejected by either her
or society or both. On and on this goes in his life… Should I or shouldn't I?
Should I or shouldn't I? … Until you finally just want to scream… “Just
kiss her.” Sometimes the great leap is just that simple and profound.
Just jump into it and take the plunge.
But he didn't do that. He fretted,
worried, doubted, sat on his hands, pined about what could have been. In the
end, he lived a life of ‘never was' and he wrote about interminably
so that graduate students for generations would have to plow through his pain.
And that is always an alternative, one too often taken.
The faith alternative takes a risk
and it is emotionally difficult, like the woman on the old show Hill Street
Blues that dares to try love again after a long, long grief. And she gets
to this place where she is almost ready to try love. She meets someone that is
attractive, kind, interesting and fun. They meet a few times and spend time.
Finally, they get to that moment of a long silence at the end of what is a real
date, and she is face with the romantic
moment of decision- to just stay friends or to get involved. She looks up at
him and she says, “I don't remember how to do this.” He says to her, “It's like
riding a bike. Just start peddling.” Sometimes you have to just start peddling.
Love, romantic or
otherwise, has a way of opening up the
whole world before us in wonder, hope, and mystery. It is worth the
vulnerability, the hurt, and the disappointment that it can (and will) cause
us. The great leap of faith lands us in the wonder-filled character of our
world. It opens us to the adventure of the unfolding meaning and purpose, even
in the midst of tragedy and loss. The great leap of faith lands us with people
and they root us in the community of friends, of support, sharing, caring- that
gives us courage in the face of difficulty, hope in the midst of challenge and
set back, purpose in the midst of ambiguity.
“For every thing there is a
season”, says the writer of Ecclesiastes.
A time to weep, and a time
to laugh
A time to mourn, and a time
to dance;
A time to embrace, and a
time to refrain from embracing;
A time to keep, and a time
to cast away;
A time to break down, and a
time to build up. (Ecc. 3:2-7 rearranged)
It is a good insight, particularly
on the topic of grief, because in a large sense, grief is a season in our lives
where we have to follow the rhythms of our hearts. We are responding more than
initiating, and our souls will tell us the speed of our season.
But changes are not entirely natural
either; they are not simply automatic. There are decisive moments or junctures
where we have to will ourselves or just leap in faith because our soul is not
ready to willingly trust or affirm but we know that something important is at
stake. We know, deep inside, that we need to do something.
At the end of his life, Moses spoke
to the people of Israel just before they were to enter the Promised Land. He
recounted all that they had been through together, all that God had done for
them. He recounted the Covenant, the Ten Commandments that they lived by
together. And he said to them, “I put before you this day, the way of Life and
the way of despair. Choose life.” He was right. Choose life.
Amen.
© 2002 .
All rights reserved
