Anxiety High

Are We Addicted to Panic?

Like nearly every other sentient creature, I have moments when I feel anxious. I’ve noticed as I get older, however, that my anxiety is in direct proportion to what terrible things are taking place all around me.

Scratch that; my nerves are amped in direct proportion to what terrible things I’m constantlyreminded are taking place all around me.

Climate change, along with unpredictable, horrible weather? Check. Countries marching on other countries? Check. Viral menaces? Check. Government spying? Check. Cyber-terrorism? Check. Physical, emotional and psychological terrorism? Check, check and check. And by the way, a bear just killed a hiker in a state preserve near Rutgers University.

The sky is falling.

Wait, that’s just an expression. Please don’t start sharing on social media a rumor that we are about to be obliterated by a meteor.

I’m not making light of the world’s problems by any means. Nor do I fail to recognize thatthose problems are likely to become our problems in an interconnected world. We’re vulnerable. Yesterday, a plane into the World Trade Center. Today, a cyber attack on a popular convenience store and a super-sized bank. Tomorrow, a virus spread simply by shopping at your local grocery store.

Anxiety is part of the human condition, it seems. There’s always been a disease or an enemy or a natural calamity to worry about. Sometimes all three at once. When I was just a tot, my parents had to deal with Communists and rabid anti-Communists in Congress, a foreign war, polio scares and the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation. Oh, and a local serial killer named Ed Gein. Now we are contending with blood-thirsty, media-savvy jihadists, a polarized, under-achieving Congress and both home-grown and foreign viruses.

{insert scream here}

We also have a free-wheeling, competitive and anxious media machine, lightly monitored, putting out (or throwing out) more bits and pieces of data than ever at lightening speed in an effort to stay ahead of one another. It’s all called information, but here’s the fact of the matter: Some of it is true, some of it isn’t, and too little of it receives the kind of review it deserves. We read, we react, we share. Then again, frightening headlines have been a staple of news stories since long before newspapers were printed (“if it bleeds, it leads”).

What’s different this time? Quite likely nothing. It doesn’t quell all our fears to say “mankind has been here before”–even age-old fear has a way of feeling fresh–but it might assist us adopt some perspective. Back in the fifties, Sheldon Harnick, the lyricist for the hit musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” wrote a song called “The Merry Minuet.” Whenever I come up against the latest scare, I listen to this tune–the full version, not the abridged one made famous by the Kingston Trio. While the specifics of the verses may be dated, the chorus is timeless. Besides, it’s a catchy melody and couldn’t we all use a sing-along? Altogether now:

There are days in my life
When everything is dreary
I grow pessimistic
Sad and world-weary
But when I am fearful and tearfully upset
I always sing this merry little minuet

They’re rioting in Africa (la la la la la la la)
They’re starving in Spain (la la la la la la)
There’s hurricanes in Florida (la la la la la la la)
And Texas needs rain ( la la la la la la)

The whole world is festering
With unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans
The Germans hate the Poles

Italians hate Yugoslavs
South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don’t like
Anybody very much

In faraway Siberia (la la la la la la la)
They freeze by the score (la la la la la la)
An avalanche in Switzerland (la la la la la la la)
Just got fifteen more (la la la la la la)

But we can be tranquil
And thankful and proud
For man’s been endowed
With a mushroom shaped cloud

And we know for certain
That some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off
And we will all be blown away (la la la la la la)

They’re rioting in Africa
There’s strife in Iran
What nature doesn’t do to us
Will be done by our fellow man (la la la la la la)
copyright 1958 Sheldon Harnick