Anxiety is also tricky.
Impermanence is an interesting, yet simple, concept. To me, impermanence means that this which I feel now will not be what I feel for the rest of my time. Because I am sad now,does not mean I will feel this way forever. It cannot be this way forever. Just as a soul that lives a life in one form cannot live in this form for eternity, this specific form will die and rot away, and the soul will – hopefully – move along its journey to Nirvana. Nirvana is interesting because it is described not as a heaven, but as a goal. Nirvana is to be without suffering, simply. Suffering is pain, worry, anxiety, stress, anger, burdens, any of these things that we tie ourselves to like animals chained to a stake and constantly kept mere inches away from that we desire most. The terms Nirvana and impermanence do technically come from Buddhist teachings, but I would not call myself a Buddhist, just open minded.
Impermanence helps me, personally, get through tough times by reminding me that these tough times are simply one more step along a staircase – the Staircase to Nirvana, maybe? It is the lessons we learn every day, without even realizing we are learning anything important, that give impermanence it’s power to calm my nerves. Because this moment of sadness is a lesson I am learning at this very moment, soon the lesson will be over and I will be closer to my ultimate goal. Nirvana? Maybe.
My true ultimate goal is happiness.
It would seem, then, that anxiety is there for a reason, perhaps evolutionary? It has been argued that utilizing anxiety is one of the many ways that we as a species have grown so far ahead of other mammals on the planet. If we utilize our consciousness in a way that helps us predict the future, we can overcome the danger that much more quickly and efficiently, and live to tell about it with our advanced linguistic skills, right?
These days, though, most of us don't need to try and predict what would happen in the event of a cheetah attack. We tend to worry about other, seemingly pointless things, instead. For instance, me worrying about waking up on time in the morning will not help me wake up in the morning any easier. It will, in fact, make it that much harder to sleep for a large portion of the night, leaving me exhausted in the morning and even more likely to sleep through my alarm. Worrying about the exam I am about to take will not help my performance much, aside from the increased presence of mind that comes with the physical response in the sympathetic nervous system, but that will most likely just make it harder for me to think clearly as I'm forced to sit still for two hours and concentrate. Buzz Aldrin, the man who accompanied Neil Armstrong to the moon so many years ago, spoke about the fear that astronauts must experience, and how he sees it.
There is hardly anything productive about worry or fear when you can't do anything about the circumstances. Why be anxious until something happens? I think about taking off in a fighter plane -- you get the aircraft in the air and raise the gear, and if at that moment the engine goes out, you're in big trouble. Yet it wouldn't be much fun to be a fighter pilot if you were filled with fear every time you went out on the runway. I don't think anybody -- astronauts or otherwise -- is born with some kind of right stuff. It's something you work into. You don't learn it, but you adjust to it in your own way. Or else you wash out of flight school and get a job as a journalist."
- Buzz Aldrin
So, without much of an evolutionary purpose to serve, anxiety is pretty stupid.
