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VITA BREVIS
It's amusing how TRUE movie cliches can get. Particularly when it's Scarlett O'Hara saying "Tomorrow is another day.", or Atticus Finch saying, "Things will be better in the morning."
I thought I'd have to give up something I'd always wanted to do, and several nights spent in sleepless anxiety and agony over my decision hadn't helped solve the problem.
As it turned out, all I needed to do to resolve the dilemma was simple. Two words: Earl Grey.
My feathers don't get easily ruffled over little spats or squabbles. Usually, it'd take something pretty catastrophic for me to even feel anything remotely akin to anxiety or distress. (Yes, part of the Ice Queen syndrome...hehehe.) Since such events happen so rarely in my monotonous existence I sometimes forget how to deal with them. This time around when faced with what seemed at that time an inevitable choice of giving up a valued aspect of my life, career-wise, I almost forgot to apply my traditional antidote to catastrophe: a pot of Earl Grey on the table beside my fat armchair, and half an hour of just THINKING the whole thing through.... And I realized the choices were unlimited. My anxiety was preventing me from seeing just how broad that spectrum of choice really is.
I had paralyzed myself into thinking there was no other option.
I basically caused myself my own grief. :)
I think this is why psychiatrists are so much of a norm these days. With a lot of twenty-, thirty-, and forty-somethings stressed and overworked over the fast pace of living, they don't have much time to listen to themselves, to distance themselves from the immediate concerns confronting them, and essentially look at any situation confronting them in the abstract. When you look at it, really, without disparaging the psychiatry or psychology profession, a lot of the things they tell you are things you KNOW, but choose not to hear or acknowledge even in the privacy of your own thoughts. Hearing someone else tell you something you'd rather not tell yourself validates that thought. When the thought gets repeated, it doesn't necessarily mean it will be followed, but it's significant enough in influencing your course of action simply because it's present in your consciousness. Even if you reject an idea, the fact is, you had to consider it, to begin with. From there, it's just a matter of dealing with the crossroads --- to do or not to do, to believe or not to believe, to think or not to think. (Hitler was such a devil at brainwashing people...simply on the belief that if you repeat something several times, the people would believe it to be true. Perhaps that has some basis. After all, I find it difficult to believe that an entire nation fell for the lame Aryan theory without some undue influence from the Nazi party.)
We all need to listen to ourselves once in a while, in as close a vacuum as we can approximate to enable us to articulate the constant stream of thoughts and emotions raging through our daily reality. We seek that 'void' the most in times when our daily reality demands circumvention, change, or conquest. Sometimes, multitasking simply isn't the suitable response. We need focus to deal with the extraordinary.
After all, when catastrophe strikes in whatever shape or form, shouldn't this be a prime opportunity for instincts to sever you from shock or anxiety and allow you to deliberate on decisive action?