So I spent the morning run thinking of my own antithetical pairings. Running/resting. Eating - oh, wait, I'm never not eating. Hungry/sated (see previous). Paying attention/tuning out. Anxious/... What comes as a backdrop against which anxiety stands out in defined relief? That one I don't get.
Read a book called "Saving Sammy" where the single mother of three describes an uncharacteristic failure of executive function after nearly 18 months of dealing with a severely mentally ill child. Missed meetings, forgotten details. She ascribed it to a wearing out over time, of being worn down by her stressors to the point where she could no longer cope with the higher-order requirements of her professional life. That was so not the main point of the book, but it resonated. The story is about her then 12 year old middle son who developed overnight OCD and Tourrette's Syndrome and it took nearly a year and a half and antibiotic treatment for mysterious strep to bring him back to normal.
"The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease." And I have nothing to do with it. Well, it's not my fault. Ok, I didn't cause it. It's not my fault the ten thousand things go humming along wherever they want. I would say I'm a victim of the ten thousand things, but that's not exactly right. I watch them, I partake of some of them. Maybe I might spin one as it goes by just for effect. Ok, so I like shiny toys. But seriously, how much trouble is one person in the span of history actually capable of getting into?
Lao Tsu is described in the book's introduction as "an older contemporary of Confucius." Lao Tsu lived in the 6th century bce, or roughly 600 + 2010 = 2610 years ago, give or take. That's a lot of lives who have at one point been in being, or are still in being. That's a lot of ten thousand things doing their things. How much of the blame could realistically be pinned on me?
Oh, the antithesis of anxiety? I'm not a total idiot. If I were in class I'd have to play the guessing game, though, as if my professor were hiding the ball and I did not want to commit to some stupid answer. Peace? Calmness? Stillness? Confidence? The twelve steps about letting go and letting god? (aside: googling "Alcoholics Anonymous" to find the twelve steps was the first search in a long time that came up with the content site first and not wikipedia). I can't answer the opposite of anxiety from experience right now, and I'm wobbly on answering from an intellectual perspective.
I have been in school for a long time. I still hang onto stressors and adaptations I needed to get me through earlier rounds of this process, and I've been really slow on the uptake to adapt to the stressors in front of me. Something to think about, no?
I really enjoy your new blog! My running is shit since December. After years of running alone, I'm having a tough time of it. But this might give me the inspiration to try something else while I'm on the road.
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