“Turn Anxiety Into Creativity”

by Dr. Larry Morris

(originally appeared in The Daily Lobo, April 29, 2003) 

Paul Tillich said that ours is the age of anxiety.

Indeed, many of us live in a world of worry. In the Yoga tradition they say that the child is busy with play, the youth is busy with pleasure, the adult is busy with worry. If we are in school, we worry about tests, papers and grades. Many of us are chronically anxious about our relationship or our family or the way the world is going, particularly, the chaotic affairs in the Middle East.

Sometimes we worry about our bodies: they're too heavy or too thin or we have allergies, aches or pains, colds or flu. We're always measuring and comparing how we are feeling from moment-to-moment. We experience a seemingly endless frustration: things never seem to be quite as good as they ought to be. We are never quite satisfied in the moment, never quite fulfilled. We feel that there should be a better life or at least another life than the one we are leading. We may be blaming ourselves or blaming others for our situation. Yet, as the Chinese say, "Always repenting of wrongs done will never bring my heart to rest." We feel that there must be another way of seeing, another way of living. Indeed, the dissatisfaction we experience can be the way to our freedom.

It may be that our frustration is not so unnatural or "abnormal." Living in a world driven by pressures to fit in and conform, to obey the rules, yet to be ourselves, to be unique and innovative — no wonder we can feel a profound sense of anxiety. How can we be true to ourselves living in a society that absorbs uniqueness and individuality? How can we fulfill all the demands placed upon us and yet be spontaneous and happy? So our worries may not be so much our fault as our inborn response to the conflicting and contradictory pressures from the world in which we live.

Perhaps, like the Buddha, our innate frustration may lead us to find a way beyond human sorrow.

As a young man, Buddha was confronted with the realities of old age, sickness and death. He asked, "Will these things happen to me?" When he was told that they would, he was driven to abandon everything to find a release from these human maladies. He finally achieved his freedom, but his quest began because of his anxiety. Our anxiety may be the stepping-stone to our release.

Kierkegaard said that anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. This feels something like the chick breaking through the eggshell into an undreamed-of immensity. Our anxiety may be our intuitive awareness that demands a larger life, a deeper fulfillment. It is our unwillingness to settle for satisfactions in a world too small.

The reason we don't let our anxiety deepen within us until we achieve a catharsis of release is that we live in a culture that encourages us to compromise and to make peace with our feelings so that we don't upset the status quo.

Society has always had an uneasy and troubled relationship with creative and innovative individuals. We are encouraged to think our own thoughts, but within limits, not to be too daring or too original. We do live within a social order and we have to come to terms with how we will fit into this society. Yet, we don't have to settle for the lowest common denominator and become a clog in a corporate or academic wheel.

There must be a way to be ourselves, to express what we and only we can give to this life, and yet, somehow, relate that creativity and uniqueness to this culture in which we find ourselves.

Perhaps this is the real source of our anxiety and our worry: how to be genuinely ourselves and yet fit ourselves into this world without compromising our ideals or diluting the creative spark at the center of our being. This is our quest — driven by a troubled heart — to find our own unique creative solutions of how to both be ourselves and be in this world.

What we need is an intuitive leap from deep within ourselves that transforms our dissatisfaction into a unique creative expression. The ancient Greeks had a word that meant both emergency and emergence. Perhaps our emergency right now is also leading to our emergence.

All the creative geniuses have been pioneers of the unknown, reaching beyond the cliches of society to create something that has never been before. Each of these visionary pioneers touched the point of life where no one yet has been and captured and expressed something that no one had ever seen or experienced before them.

Instead of suppressing your dissatisfaction, perhaps you should let it deepen within you until it becomes a visionary fire that melts into creative action. Stay dissatisfied until you discover your own unique place in this life, until your endless anxiety turns into an equally endless and boundless joy.