As we fully enter October with a government shut-down bringing more accusations, retaliation threats, and overall uncertainty, it is easy to take on personal and collective anxiety. By anxiety, I mean an uneasy sense of alarm about this conflict: How long it will continue? What does it mean for our future, and the future of those that truly matter to us. Anxiety, when it takes over, impacts and impairs both our physical and psychological functioning. In times like these, with escalating, seemingly rapid change, there is a compilation effect. And in a strange way, a sudden reversal of whatever change, while perhaps welcomed, can at the same time feed the feeling of chaos. Even small uncertainties can disrupt our sense of well being. We need time to process and gain perspective. Last month I wrote about the spiritual antidote to fear and hate, is love. This week, I invite you to consider the spiritual antidote to anxiety is truth.
I had another kitchen epiphany this week. It was pretty late when I started making a dinner salad; I had recently bought a big box of arugula from the grocery store, planning to use it for the entire week. When I opened it though, it was unusually wet. I've known arugula as of those long lasting greens, and even if it gets a dry, it's still quite good. I had never opened a completely wet box. The "use by" stamp gave me another 6 days. But this batch was almost soaking in water, like nothing I'd encountered before. Some of the leaves were actually looking like mush. I really did not want to give it up, but something inner was putting on the brakes. My medical training underscores the value of basic research on food safety. These days, produce reports can be inundated with lists of listeria and other bacterial food contamination, but I'd not seen anything worrisome about arugula. I was of two minds--something in me warned, "no, don’t eat it”; habit and appetite said "Yes!” Still, I decided to take a "scroll my phone vote"! When I am stumped by a recipe, or other food issue, I look at various food sites on my phone for information and perspective. I use a cross-section of sites that include the Food Safety "rule book", as well as individual personal experiences. It's a fast search, since I am looking for "just the facts, please." My arugula phone search concluded, "when in doubt, throw it out." I struggled with my resistance to letting the whole mess go into the compost, but the inner directive pulled with the counter message again, "let it go", so I did. Ultimately, it may not have mattered to the body if I ate the leaves; the real meaning was in my willingness to give it up, to follow that feeling, to make a choice.
Here's what struck me (after I had eaten something else): All day long we are bombarded by messaging of one form or another. Very few of them are urgent; yet in these times, the illusion of urgency, the echo of urgency, is there. The urgency creates anxiety. Trust becomes the antidote to anxiety, when we make a decision, when we take action, when we see we do have choices and we chose, including sometimes, choosing to trust others. The Spiritual life brings a deeper level of trust in the essential goodness of Life, including a deeper trust in our own resilience and situational flexibility, as well as subtle cues that guide us through the maze of difficult times. We shift from the powerlessness of anxiety to trusting the powers of action and choice. This is a good week to study the anxiety of collective and personal uncertainty, and your deeper capacity to move forward with inner trust. (Susan Nettleton)
for poetry: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50109/trust-56d22ce3845d0
https://www.best-poems.net/wendell-berry/sabbath-poem-i-1979.html#google_vignette
https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/O/ODonohueJohn/ForaNewBegin/index.html