If you feel anxiety or depression, you are not in the present. You are either anxiously projecting the future or stuck in the past. The only thing you have any control over is the present moment . . . (Hanson)
Sometimes you need to sit lonely on the floor in a quiet room in order to hear your own voice . . . (Eriksson)
Why, on some mornings, are my cats as good as gold, peacefully snoozing away with sweet little kitty smiles on their faces and purrs in their bellies, and on others, holy terrors, racing about, dragging tinsel and Christmas balls in their wake, cackling manically at each other. Today they are attempting to persuade the dog to join them in their 5 a.m. mayhem, and while he looks mildly interested, he also knows no cookies are gonna be forthcoming if he does, and so heads back to his warm bed.
Because yesterday was cookie baking day, and the sweet, spicy aromas still linger in and about the keeping room, where I am hunkered down under the Christmas tree thinking these deep thoughts about the animal psyche. It was an unpleasant awakening this morning with what I call a bad dream, one of those where I am in the woods, futilely trying to find my former husband and a foster child, both of whom passed on many, many years ago. So I would rather avoid any deep thoughts which would engender anymore anxiety this morning.
It is still dark, and I can see the car lights of our nearest neighbor about a mile over on the mountain, heading out to work. She is an oncology nurse, and there is a reassuring sameness in her routine every morning. Even in the midst of the pandemic our routines go on. I bake Christmas cookies to put in the freezer since our grandkids and friends won’t be coming this Christmas, and my neighbor heads out to work.
Since I still want to avoid my bad dream, I let my mind drift back to all those thousands of mornings when I also headed out to work in the predawn hours. They seem very long ago now, and at the same time, like yesterday. In these days of semi-isolation, I often wonder if former students and patients still remember me. It is one of the many idle thoughts with which I fill my mind so I won’t have to think of the ever-present angst and suffering that permeates the very atmosphere now. But at night, when my guard is down . . . Ah, that’s when it appears in all its fury and strides in hip boots to and fro in front of me . . .
And so on this morning, my under-the-Christmas-tree reflections have considerable avoidance in them, especially since my readers don’t even have a hint of the reassuring cookie aroma that floats around me. Wouldn’t that be a great perfume scent? Essence of Christmas cookie.
Still avoiding.
Eventually I will tire of it as a defense strategy, as I always do and instead embrace the current anxiety and angst reflected in my dream for what it is, a normal response to a new and frightening and terribly ambiguous reality. None of us really know how to go on right now. We cling to our routines, our rituals, our traditions. Some of us become even more rigidly authoritarian about our beliefs and the rightness of our positions and ways of being, whatever they may be. And as I talked about yesterday, some of us become overly positive cheerleaders, as an antidote to the ambiguity.
And some of us just wander in the woods, futilely looking for something that is lost forever.
My husband is fond of using the analogy of the difference between fear and anxiety as being whether or not there really is a train on the tracks headin’ toward you. I would say, “In this case, yes. There really is a pandemic that threatens us all. There IS a train.” He would say, “No in this moment, there is no train. In the next moment, there may be one, so stay alert and pay attention, but it is not here now. NO train. If the train appears in that future moment, you can and will face it and act appropriately.”
In this moment, no train. Only peace. Outside it is still dark, and the frosty, crisp air freezes in my nose as I put out the dog (who had finally decided that chasing the cats was irresistible), and inside, cookie-ghosts still linger.