On anxiety and risk
treading into the unknown vs never knowing the unknown
I am extremely insecure, chronically depressed and anxious, in a perpetual existential crisis — hence it is a daily miracle that I am not convulsing in panic most of the time, considering the way I’ve chosen to live. — Facebook
I am not generating income, I have disowned myself from my career, I am working on ideas which may just be plain delusional, I am always deliberately exposing my vulnerability in public, I have chosen to love and connect deeply without the safety of committed relationships, I have no inkling of what is ahead of me.
I seem to be a walking time-bomb, a recipe for disaster, for myself. I am walking further and further away from the crowd, from what I have known.
Yet I don’t think I’ve felt more fulfilled.
It has not been all roses. Far from it. I go into periods where I drown myself in self-doubt and existential questioning. All of this does not seem to bode well for my precarious mental health.
I completed the thought I had — writing my daily 750 words — that while it is true that my current way of life is anxiety-inducing, the alternative would have been worse.
There is the anxiety of treading into the unknown, then there is the anxiety of never knowing the unknown.
The anxiety of: a life unlived, the ideas unbirthed, the persistent feeling that I would never have come to trust my agency, the disconnect of having to rely on a system I do not actually believe in, that I am buying into a sense of security that I know does not really exist.
So yes, I am still anxious and sometimes I still question my desire to live, but if I can’t opt out of the predisposition of my anxiety and depression, I can at least exert my power over what I wish to be anxious about.
I will very much rather be anxious over the risks I have consciously taken, than to be eaten up by the anxiety of not taking them. I can walk away from the crowd, from perceived safety, no matter how painful and alienating that may be, but I just cannot walk away from discovering the unknown, the exhilaration of taking leaps of faith, because there is where I find true safety for myself — the safety of knowing I have given my best shot at living, even if I am not drawn to life itself in the first place.
I am still not calling it quits.
Further reading:
The risk not taken by Andy Dunn
