Worrying is when a person looks to the future with fear. Anxiety is when something in the past provokes fear in a person.
We are sandwiched between the events of COVlD and a potentially disastrous US election outcome that will sway trillions of dollars toward the means and ends of unprecedented social controls, chaos, and levels of taxation that even the slaves of yesteryear would wilt in the face of.
People are taking these events as occasion to simply give up.
Forget about dreaming big!
Forget about striving for greatness.
The barriers are too great!
When you are socially conditioned to anticipate your conditions dramatically disintegrating, it puts a huge weight of stress on you. You are now living as a captive.
How do we thrive, let alone cope, with a decaying world?
One clue lies in our nostalgia. The way we experience memories or media that provokes certain moods for us can instruct us on how wonderful life could be. We are not meant to pine for a distant, glorious past. We are meant to improve our environment and spread virtue.
When you just “gotta get that feeling” from a piece of media you enjoy, think to yourself, “How is this guiding me to be proactive and engaged in my life today?”
It’s one thing to sit around listening to Bach, imagining the reveries he must have gone into at St. Thomas. Or to marvel at the million dollar smile of your favorite film actor.
It’s another thing to dedicate yourself to a practice, to a discipline that puts you daily at the edge of your limits.
Do you read voraciously? Do you study a field with focused intensity? Do you strive to do better than you did the day before? Is there something fundamentally constructive that you are repeatedly committing yourself to in a passionate and enthusiastic manner?
Or are you lounging around, wincing in anticipation for the next “big thing” that the government does to screw everyone over? Are you feeling lost and adrift because four years ago, half the population was ready to put the other in concentration camps? Are you getting high or playing video games because something bad lives in your mind?
Are you leading a life of symptom management or a life of adventure and intrigue?
Comfort is an infectious disease.
Keep the doom scrolling at bay and do something meaningful with each block of time available to you in the day.
We are meant for greatness.
