An Essay On Anxiousness
Abstract:
Anxiety can be understood from numerous perspectives, but some of such perspectives fail to adequately characterize the experience of anxiousness its self. As such, I herein offer a literary analysis of anxiety, so that some may more thoroughly understand its nature.
Table Of Contents:
- The Loom Of Anxiety
- What Anxiety Is
The Loom Of Anxiety
What Anxiety Is
Unlike the cordial echoes of a lovers voice as it reverberates endlessly through the chambers of our minds, anxiety is of a far more somber and pernicious nature; it cracks and breaks the foundations of our bodies and spirits, never to be repaired. We are stricken by darkness and emptiness when anxious, we become by-standers inside consciousness; we watch everything pass by while being utterly indifferent to it all. A loss of awareness, of feeling, and of connection: a human deprived of humanity.
But anxiety, despite its destructive and numbing powers, and its disorienting effects, be precise and contained: domain specific. It seldom seeps into neighbouring containers; it resides inside one and only one aspect of our life, luckily enough.
Amongst a crowd of unfamiliar and daunting faces, we see the whites of many eyes contrasted against the dark, looming clouds of anxiety, producing unpalatable social discomfort. Have I said something worrisome? Have I upset my interlocutor? Do they think poorly of my smile? Inwardly they are thrown, brutal attacks on our brittle esteem; and the attacks be done by no other hand than our own. Though those specific types of self-attacks arise only in social life, as they are contained to that domain. But, we nevertheless experience other forms of anxiousness and self-hatred in other domains of life.
Life has domains of personal pursuit, for instance. The career oriented male or female pursues various materials and social rankings; the romantic pursues affection, euphoria, and connection; and of us all, we pursue our dreams. We are all in a pursuit, the end of which only arrives upon the fruition of our ideals; a material manifestation of whatever it be that resides in our minds.
But as said with the previous domain of social life, the looming clouds of anxiety produce an unpalatable discomfort herein as well: personal pursuit brings personal fear; fear of failure, fear of isolation, fear of change. Anxiety casts a shadow over all personal pursuit when we have such fears. We become unable to step forwardly in proper pace toward a personal goal. Thus, yet another sphere of being tainted with the wretchedness of anxiousness. Speak softly and tread lightly, lest one so seeks to be consumed by gloom and anxiety.
But some of us have been so fortunate as to have never experienced any such anxiety; nay, some of us have lived free from the molestation of anxiety: free to speak confidently, free to act securely, and free to pursue whim. A life free from worrisome thoughts and burdensome feelings of inadequacy: how luck a life be.
But at the same time, some of us have been riddled with fear and broken by worry; discomfort and unease lurk close behind, scheming and plotting. Some of us have had the worse anxiety of all; that aberrant anxiety which flushes over the entirety of consciousness and floats freely. Some of us have had an anxiety towards the entirety of life: an unconfined, unrestrained, and omnipresent torment known as generalized anxiety: a malignant spirit that haunts our days and ruins our nights.
One knows nothing of the bounds of hell, that abhorrent accommodation wherein which the stench of fear proliferates throughout our sense of olfaction, unless one so journeys through. To develop a first person perspective of pain rather than be the doctor who ascribes the medication via analysis of symptoms. To live life in fear rather than to notice fear in life.
“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering”. – Friedrich Nietzsche
