In the mental health café
Most of us just order the usual
The anxiety du jour
A small mixed salad of worries
With a little resentment on the side
For many, anxiety is the norm. Anxiety seems to propel life forward, a basic energy in life. This may be true to an extent, but it is likely rooted in fear avoidance. I have heard it said that anxiety is the truest form of atheism. If it’s all up to me and I have no reliable authority from which to gird my accountability for my actions, where oughts are arbitrary, then existential anxiety must be the norm (see John Paul Sartre in various conundrums of being condemned to be free). If God is love, and love casts out fear, then we can let go of our anxieties and live freely into any passion which is in accord with love. The difference between love and fear may be as subtle as the difference between creating as a process and gaining as an outcome. If creating is de-linked from personal gain, then gain happens for all. If our creating is enmeshed in personal gain or loss avoidance, the goodness doesn’t grow, and, at best, it is merely maintained. The seed metaphor is perhaps the most apt in grasping this process in that a seed must die to its current state of existence to grow into something more, some potential in the seed actualized, a crop yielding many-fold. Greed and selfishness leads us to consume our seed, or even better for the selfish, to consume others’ seed. The worst fruit of such selfish behavior is tempting others to pay undue attention to merely protecting what they have versus creating anew. Let us not be overly wrought with the selfishness of others and continue following our good passions yielding good fruits for all.
