Waiting for the Bang
When I was a kid, I had the startle response of a flock of pigeons. Someone unexpectedly opening the door to my room was enough to send me scattering like a meth cook in a DEA bust. In an effort to alleviate symptoms, jump-scare movies were an affair best-experienced by intermittent sidelong glances. Most of my attention was focused on my popcorn. Or the back of the guy's head in front of me. Or the drink stains on the tile floor. But it never worked. As soon as the guy with the pumpkin head appeared, always corresponding precisely with the sudden crash of bass drum and screeching stringed instruments, I was choking on my Junior Mints.
But what I really dreaded, was the fourth of July. I just couldn't mask my flinching amongst explosions. Oh, I was fine with garden-variety fare. Firecrackers, bottle rockets and roman candles were a heavily-trafficked currency among the nine-year-olds in my neighborhood. A gray-market commodity that implied bravery and imparted secrecy among those who could get them. Secrecy, because parents of nine-year-olds, as it turns out, aren't, as a rule, crazy about their kids lighting off cheaply-made cardboard sticks full of gunpowder. I can see that now.
Since I was often the one lighting the fuses, there was no real surprise. I knew what would happen next. No, road stand fireworks weren't the issue. It was the full blown, everybody-packed-onto-blankets-at-the-city-park type of pyrotechnic shows that did me in. Something about the unpredictability of the delay between flash and bang caused me to turn into a whimpering shell of a boy, hands clapped over ears, eyes turned away from the bright colors in the black sky. And the noisemaking variety - the type that came with only a deafening clap - and no collateral beauty (read: warning) - were the worst. I developed a simmering resentment of the guys who made the decision to include those in the lineup.
I grew out of that fear of being startled pretty quickly. Maybe it was maturity. Doubtful, because of all the adjectives used to describe me as a youth, that one never made regular appearances. Maybe it was just a logical progression of conditioning, as the neighborhood boys gave up on inch-and-a-halfers, and began fashioning their own devices with cardboard tubes, tape, and the gunpowder from a hundred sacrificial Black Cats. What seemed loud once, didn't have the same shock value.
But whatever the reason, the void left by my old juvenile case of the jumps, as I got older, was filled by a slow-moving and dark anxiety - of nothing and everything - that was much more insidious. Much more difficult to explain, and even harder to manage.
Tests at school, doctor's appointments, birthday parties. All caused me to awake on the morning of the event with the same twisting burn in my stomach. A murky dread that didn't have a focus. There wasn't any one specific thing I feared. Just the worst. Whatever that might be. I knew when my parents left to go out with friends, they probably were - unbeknownst to them - on their way to a fiery death, after their car plunged off the cliff and into the rocks below. Never mind that I grew up in Omaha. A city famous for its mail-order steaks and its lack of cliffs.
The subjects of my worry changed as I aged, but it never really mattered who or what I was worrying about, or what events transpired - real or imagined - to cause my anxiety. The feeling was the same. I'm an answer guy. I like to compartmentalize things. Label them. Put them into boxes and then onto the correct shelf in my mind. So I read up on what might be the root of my problems. But what I found made it worse. I read things like: "Don't worry about what you can't control". "Overcoming the fear of the unknown is the foundation of bravery". And my personal favorite: "We don't know what tomorrow brings, so live each day as if it were your last".
Those are all fine sentiments, and probably decent advice. But to me, they seemed to be entirely missing the point. Those are the very ideas that caused my worry, rather than alleviated it. Why in the world would you worry about things you CAN control? Live each day as if it were your last? I'm already DOING that, aren't I? At least, that's how it felt. Always assuming that this was probably it. That this one decision would end it all, in one way or another. Always consumed with the finality of it all. Isn't the fact that we don't know the future, we don't know what the doctor will say, we don't know how we'll be received at the work presentation, we don't know what our child will encounter their first day behind the wheel, we don't know if we're saying or doing or acting the right way today, to bring about the best result tomorrow...the fundamental thing that makes us anxious in the first place?
The answer, of course, is yes. It is. But then that points to the fundamental problem.
It isn't about us.
We aren't designed to think inwardly for all hours of the day and night. We are meant to fix and help and create. To make better the lives of those around us. That's not a popular thought, and one normally reserved for charity - that pitying impulse we follow mainly when we have a surplus of time and money, and a benevolent mood strikes. Movies are made about bootstrapping business guys and loner cowboys. We are taught from a young age that the very fabric of America is built on independence and idealism. I'm not arguing against those things. I'm saying that our focus is misdirected. Our ambitions are misguided. Our reasons for what we do are misplaced.
If we experience fear, we're taught to fake our way through it. In business and personal improvement circles, one of the maxims you hear often, is that when you walk into a room, you should exude charm and confidence. You, and everyone else, have to KNOW that you are the person in the room who has something to say. You should carry yourself with the air of someone who has it figured out. The problem with this, as with most maxims, is that there is some truth behind it. We can't all cower behind the bookshelves every time we feel nervous. But look at the maxim again: What is solved by walking into a room and affecting a false air? In that supposed method of feeling confident, haven't we merely replaced the fear of looking incompetent with the fear of looking like a bad actor?
We all experience anxiety at times. It's a part of life. The part, in fact, that can keep us safe, or cause us to think about decisions with more care. We are all always somewhere on the continuum. Some, like me, fight it regularly. Other, more easygoing types, only have it crop up occasionally. Total elimination isn't the goal here. But being paralyzed by fears and insecurities is not only an ideal way to waste a life, it is reaching epidemic status. The Guardian, a UK-based newspaper, reported last year that 60 million people in the EU are affected by anxiety, and nearly 10% of the population in the US is similarly plagued.
This can't be the way we should live. How do we have hope, or joy, or accomplishment, if we waste our days trying to nail down that which we can't even see? We can't. But here's the thing: Trying to force yourself to quit worrying is like trying to think yourself into a 2:10 marathon finish from your couch. Won't happen. So stop trying. Instead, see that the solution to the maelstrom of discontent cannot possibly lie within it's very source: Your own head. So spend less time there. When you get up, decide that you will, whatever the cost, make someone's day better today. That you will help someone. That the dollars you make, or the laundry you fold, or the sink you fix is not something you're doing for yourself. It is a gift to someone else. What you accomplish for yourself isn't, at the end of the day, all that meaningful. They make movies about businessmen and cowboys, sure. But the movies we remember - those that really matter - are the ones made about self-sacrifice. About honor. About generosity. About love. Nobody, including you, will care if you arrive at the end of your days with a trophy or a Porsche or an account full of money.
But if you live a life full of giving, full of thoughtfulness toward others, of empathy and caring and a focus on helping others move forward, you will find that you won't have time to worry about those things that seemed so important yesterday. Those largely imaginary concerns that threatened to crowd every chance for happiness from your thoughts, will have been replaced with a reality of joy and peace, and a certainty that what you have done, what you are doing today, and what you will do tomorrow, are important. That they matter. You'll know that from here forward, when you see a flash, it will be a smile on the face of someone who recently only knew tears. Or the drifting colors in the night sky. Feel free to savor them both.
Instead of waiting for the bang.