How worried should we be?
Headlines jolt me awake like a live wire. Ukraine, Gaza, Congress, Trump, government shutdown, it seems things can’t get worse. Dread gusts from my brain any afterglow of dream. Am I panicking? Maybe I’m responding soberly to facts. Maybe I’m not frantic enough.
It’s not just our side despairing. Our evil adversaries sound no less fraught. Their leader promises blood, mayhem, revenge if his side loses. Both sides insist America will not survive their defeat. Is this rhetoric apocalyptic – or unflinching?
We cannot know, of course. Only hindsight can evaluate levels of intensity. And hindsight, if all goes ill, may not be here to tell. Nations do go smash like dropped vases. Ask Carthage, which the Romans razed and salted. Chicken Little isn’t always over-the-top.
Humans aren’t the only anxious animal – chimps, elephants, cats, even Henry may gibber with dread; but the dread passes with its stimulus. A thunderclap suggests the world’s ending but then it doesn’t and that’s that. Humans panic at possibilities which, because they’re imaginary, may persist permanently. “How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened,” sighed Jefferson, who kept his cool.
Only imagination can allay imaginary fears. Christians, for example, banish fear of death with eternal life, a neat trick. Those who lack a superstitious fix for fright must rely on Reason for remedy. “The mind is its own place,” Doctor Milton reminds us (through his mouthpiece, Satan), “and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
This laborious process must be taught and learned. Parents who fail at this have sadly disadvantaged their children. “You’ve nothing to be afraid of” strikes me as lazy betrayal. We’ve lots to be afraid of; our challenge is coping with our fears, converting cringing into courage.
Step one: assess the worst that can happen. A friend’s insult or a pimple in the wrong place won’t kill you; a holocaust might. Calibrate your response accordingly.
Step two: measure your might, what you might do. “Change what you can,” counseled a cracker-barrel sage, “accept what you cannot.”
Step three: get busy doing and quit wasting vim on wailing. The incessant handwringing in our present crisis grates me – why not doorbell-ringing! Bellyaching sours the atmosphere and retards forward motion. Put your shoulder to the wheel, pal, your money where your mouth is, do something! You can’t do much, you pout? Well, anything is preferable to nothing.
Step four: be glad. This only sounds counterintuitive. Purpose is arguably life’s most precious gift. For once, we know why we’re here, why we were born. Parents were born to protect their young, neighbors to defend their neighbors. America didn’t use to need me much; neither the work-world, after I retired. Then along came Trump. Now, in my imagination (the only locus for existential therapy), my country and my neighbors need me plenty, whether or not they know it. Armies need voices, not just arms. Trump is my inadvertent benefactor (he’d be sorry to hear).
Our present crisis strikes me as grave. The worst that can happen seems … the end of civilization. That threat merits my all.
What I might do is mighty little, but so? If we all did all we could, our chances of success would be improved. Better is better.
I’m doing what I can do – caterwauling, granted, but to a crowd that might swell the chorus (and forgive my pertinacity).
And I’m glad, yes – to be of use. Am I of use? Unlikely. But the perception of purpose is an effective anodyne to panic.
(I also pray.)