2. Anxieties (HW)
In response to “Anxieties (JW)”
Vienna, Austria
Dear Jamie,
Reading your letter brought me much joy. It’s gratifying to know that you conquered your anxieties over driving and gives me hope to one day do the same (pray for me and all others on the road in the meantime).
Anxiety has always been a bit of a foreign word to me. We’ve been cool acquaintances, at best. (Maybe I always thought I was too lazy to be anxious?) But it’s strange, because like anyone else, I do experience anxiety at times. So I started to wonder why it was, that I had such difficulty relating to it.
To open a contemplative door on the matter, I decided to first look for how my body reacts to the word: with a minute tightening, followed by a frisson of discomfort.
That in itself is interesting because it tells me it’s certainly not a neutral reaction. To unravel it further, I realize there’s both a feeling of fear, then aversion, that accompanies the reaction.
Next, I think about why that might be. A lot has changed in recent years, but the word used to hold different connotations. Anxiety to me meant weakness, hyperactivity, stressing about the unnecessary. These were not qualities that I wanted to identify with. And so I subconsciously decided anxiety had nothing to do with me. What’s interesting to consider now is the role my body plays into the process.
It makes me wonder how many other emotions and characteristics I’ve decided are also “not me.”
I’ve been paying more attention to how emotions register in the body. Although to even get to this point, I had to pay more attention to how my body feels in general, something that I was not so attuned to growing up. Reflecting on why, it probably had a lot to do with upbringing and environment. Mind and body used to exist as distinctly separate entities. And I was interested in books, drawing, philosophy, things I believed belonged in the realm of the mind. Since elementary school the two of us had been immersed in an educational system that was heavily academic and prized intellect and logical thinking as markers for success. And while others were more active, I hated sports as a child. All this to say, that I don’t think I really thought of the body as little more than a physical vessel until recent years.
Truthfully, it’s probably only because my body started slowly breaking down as an adult that I even started paying attention to it. The first hangover that couldn’t be dismissed with a big glass of water. The first back ache from sitting at a desk for one too many hours in the day, when just a couple years ago we’d been pulling all-nighters in design studio, inhaling coffee and napping on makeshift chair-beds.
A couple nights ago, I finally watched Ali Wong’s standup (which besides being very funny, was also unexpectedly validating and cathartic, and thanks to her I’ll be thinking about colonizing the colonizers). Anyway, she sums it up well in this following bit:
Because 18-year-old girls, they could just eat like shit, and then they take a shit and have a six-pack, right? They got that beautiful inner thigh clearance where they put their feet together and there’s that huge gap here with the light of potential just radiating through.
And then, when they go to sleep, they just go to sleep. Right? They don’t have insomnia yet. They don’t know what it’s like to have to take a Ambien or download a Meditation Oasis podcast to calm the chatter of regret and resentment towards your family just cluttering your mind.
- Ali Wong: Baby Cobra (2016)
So it was a rude awakening into this new world where, in short, things had consequences — often uncomfortable, physical ones.
Since then though, this increased body awareness has served me in other ways. For one, it’s been a tool to connect me with “reality” and with the present. It’s easy for my mind to wander, into hypothetical landscapes and imaginative spheres. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but eventually I had to reckon with the fact that I’ve been using it inevitably as escapism. When things got dull, or uncomfortable, or painful, it was easy to pop out. Paying more attention to bodily sensations forces me out of my head and into the physical world.
When you introduced me to Shinzen Young and his mindfulness system, this took it to another level. I couldn’t believe how much it was possible to feel. Sometimes this was excruciating, especially during meditation, when it meant sitting for an hour with nothing to do except to observe your body. Every ache, every strain, magnified and stretched out ad infinitum. Times like these, I thought to myself, “Well, you got what you asked for, Hana. You can’t escape these boring-ass feels. Are you happy now??”
Sometimes though, beauty revealed itself. Sitting in the cafeteria afterwards for lunch, I examined a cherry tomato from my plate. Brilliantly, inconceivably red. I bit in. The flavour bursting like an explosion on the tongue. Had I ever really tasted a tomato before this? Could there be anything juicier, more vibrant?
These moments are wonderful. That the divine can come through in the mundane. I feel tenderness for this humble existence.
As for emotions and the body, I’ve probably only touched on the tip of the iceberg. Something for a future letter, maybe.
I’ll leave you with a quote by writer David Sedaris that has stuck in my mind. It’s from an excellent episode of This American Life, in which host Ira Glass visits Sedaris in Paris, where the author lived at the time. Here, he talks about the constant anxiety he experiences from being a foreigner and not knowing the language and customs:
David Sedaris: It’s that thinking that makes me feel alive and that makes me notice everything around me. When I become complacent, like I was in the United States, you just get used to things, so you don’t think about them. You think, I’ll get a cab. I’ll go to the airport. I’ll have a patty melt. And you don’t think about it.
Whereas now, with me, the anxiety starts early on. And I’m always afraid that someone’s going to throw me a curveball and ask me a question, like, what sign are you? They’ll just ask me a question like that out of nowhere, and I’ll appear foolish. So it keeps me on edge. But really, that edginess has always made me feel alive.
Ira Glass, narrating: Someday, David says, he’ll be more comfortable in French. His accent will improve and that daily anxiety will be removed from his life.
David Sedaris: But when it is removed from me, then I probably won’t be interested in living here anymore. I’ll probably leave.
(Full episode here: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/165/americans-in-paris)
It makes me wonder if all my years spent in foreign countries, tripping over impossible-to-pronounce words, haven’t been about the same thing. Chasing the edginess. Maybe anxiety and I aren’t so unfamiliar with each other after all.
Much love,
H
