Introduction
This reflection is about keeping perspective. It looks at anxieties and how they cause us to lose our proper perspective. It draws on an example from literature which sums up much of what is being thought about.
Reflection
Sometimes our sadness is pervasive, and worse, we sense it is about the wrong things. Covering cracks only for more to appear. Whether to do this, or do that, and what will the future consequences of each be. And will there be new cracks at that future time—and will
they be worse or more threatening because of my actions now? How strange our lives are when they are like this. Chasing this picture we have of our being here—plastering it, making it look good, blaming others for not playing their part properly. A strange spiral. Of course, ultimately it leads nowhere, it can lead to short-term gain (the cracks will be effectively covered at some point), but the process only repeats itself (it might not be cracks next time, but it will be something similar). If we don’t come to terms with the long-term nature of it all—what it all fits into—we are forever chasing around with our pot of Polyfilla.
I wonder if it’s possible to ‘rise above it all’? We’re in it—that’s our situation. But I feel more confident that we can get it in ‘perspective’, and that we can ‘keep going despite the anxiety’.
What is the perspective? The perspective is what the perspective is. We must remember, perspective is in itself an illusion, things look smaller when they are further away yet we know they are not actually smaller. Indeed things that are so far away that we can not see them, seem so small we give them little or no thought at all. In truth, it is irrational to worry about things beyond our perspective view. The ‘perspective’ view of our lives is
that some things seem close and pressing, some things seem far away and less pressing. The perspective is what it is—it remains an illusion. A sticker on US cars warns that ‘objects in the rear view mirror appear smaller than they are’.
I made it my business to talk to a young woman in a shop the day before yesterday—she was excitedly picking up a paper because her picture was in it. I insisted we look at it together. I was compelled to tell her truthfully how good she looked, and how well the article read. And she could not resist it as flattering. We talked about her job and her education—she was irrepressible: excited, keen, full of life, full of optimism, ‘full of beans’. She was suffused with keenness for life, for her place in it, for her own value and the value of her life in respect of the world. She beamed, she exposed her white teeth with joy and openness. She lifted me with some of her joyousness. Today, in the same shop, I was told that yesterday, in a foreign country, this young woman’s partner had been shot and killed.
Anxiety is part of our life, our nature. Everything about being alive lays the foundation for anxiety—we are, after all, going to die and lose it all in the end (and this may be closer than we think, even though it seems ‘deceptively small’ to us now). But we are other things as well as anxiety, and we need to spread ourselves. When I think of ‘consuming’ anxiety, I often think of Kafka’s ‘The Burrow’—a short story from the point of view of some burrowing animal whose burrowing efforts are never sufficient, or sufficiently complex, to allay his fears of threat from the ‘beast’ which he believes continually awaits him—a beast ready to somehow attack him if his guard is momentarily dropped. But the separate burrower can get nowhere with his accomplishments—each phase of his operation only stimulates more fear. He concludes,
The more I reflect upon it the more improbable does it seem to me that the beast has even heard of me; it is possible, though unimaginable, that it can have received news of me through some other channel, but it has certainly never heard me. So long as I still knew nothing about it, it simply cannot heave heard me, for at that time I kept very quiet, nothing could be more quiet than my return to the burrow; afterwards, when I dug the experimental trenches, perhaps it could have heard me, though my style of digging makes very little noise; but if it had heard me I must have noticed some sign of it, the beast must at least have stopped its work every now and then to listen. But all remained unchanged.
Like anything Kafka, we need to read it all. The point is, though, building burrows is never-ending. Each new extension leads to more responsibility, more potential threat. None of us would be anxious about our belongings if we had none, but then we would be anxious that we had none. The world is like Kafka’s threatening beast, and there is no escaping it, or combatting it, we cannot even get to see it properly, if at all—we only need to suspect it to fear it. And our fear, and anxiety achieve nothing, it all remains unchanged. We are in an absurd situation. Can we take such absurdity completely seriously? I’m not sure. I’m not sure how easy it is not to be serious about our life, it seems such a serious thing. How can something with such a serious outcome—the loss of it all—be treated with anything but anxiety and seriousness? Well, we need to think about that. The girl I met in the shop, had not protected herself against the beast which attacked her—she could not have.
Comments
The fact of anxiety is that it is often misdirected. That is why it is often fruitless. Worrying about the wrong thing is commonplace and destructive. Doing this means that we become despairing when we need not have been, and that when something happens that challenges our resources it often takes us by surprise. It is sometimes hard not to worry, but worrying needs to be controlled, kept in perspective. Even then it has arguable benefit—we can be prepared (if that is how it turns out) without having worried. Anxiety is the causal destroyer of what can be good in our lives—love, honesty, freedom, choice, change. It is worth considering anxiety against the general headings that tend to set it off and try to find out if it is ever justified. Epicurus' suggestions here are pivotal to attaining a balanced outlook free from fruitless anxiety.
