High Anxiety
These past 18 months, I’ve been up a lot, not late at night, but in the early morning hours. It’s 2:36 AM as my head springs off the pillow.I look around the bedroom, reassuring myself it was just a dream. Or actually, a nightmare. And that’s where the trouble starts.
I lie back down, but all I can picture is the worst thing happening in the world, images of biblical
Proportions: Floodwaters rising, engulfing whole communities in their wake, our own included. Wildfires
raging, devouring endless acres of forests, countless homes…Taliban driving victoriously through the streets of Kabul…I see hungry children sitting in their mothers’ laps…[I vow for the umpteenth time not to watch the news right before bed!] OH, and did I forget to mention the pandemic!? With all the world crises we face, our physical well-being this past year and a half has been all-encompassing, paramount, yet preserving it has come at a cost: The mental health crisis brought on by these pandemic times is pervasive, due, in part, to the on again/off again rise of infections and hospitalizations. What we thought on Memorial Day might be the beginning of this virus’ end seems now but a resurgence on a much longer road to recovery. This lack of a clearly demarcated “fresh start”
Leaves us not only physically fatigued, but emotionally exhausted. Up at all hours…Wondering about the state of our world. In a word: we are anxious.
Near mid-summer data shows that over 40% of American adults have reported adverse mental health effects…A San Francisco child Psychiatrist recently described the past year as “an avalanche of severely depressed and anxious children and adolescents.” With psychologists and therapists, especially for kids, harder to come by, and the ever-increasing need, researchers have dubbed the disorder: “COVID-19 Anxiety Syndrome.” Since we have all been feeling it…living it, it is no surprise. With the world so beyond our control, How can we help but feel anxious?
And though those among us who’ve long suffered from clinical depression and anxiety understand how severe the impact can be, and know well the importance of treating it with medical professionals’ support, this pandemic, and the times in which we live have given rise to a non-clinical yet, for many, overwhelming feeling: a kind of communal anxiety…
With stress the state of our daily existence, pandemic woes and virus variants taking their toll, the overall malaise can be tough to transcend. Recently, a swath of psychologists posited what they deemed the most successful strategies, trying to help us all worry less, The University of Leeds study shared in a journal called Psyche suggests 8 Daily Interventions for Anxiety Reduction…
For your current consideration, I boiled them down to 5-faves:
- Create a Worry Budget…give yourself a daily time allotment, a limited window to worry…with a stress stopping point. [Hmmm!?]
- Make a Worries List…Like a grocery list, noting on paper your greatest life-concerns to make them more manageable: Aging-Aisle 7…The Kids-Aisle 2…
- Adopt a Personal Mantra…Cope by saying to yourself: “Save it for later Jeff…” or “It’ll all work out in the end…”
- Try mindfulness…Turning our attention to focus on the present helps us dwell less in worries about the past or what tomorrow might bring.
- Try distraction…When stress sets in, do something: Exercise. Read, listen to music…Put your brain in a better head space.
The deep irony of all these interventions is that they run counter to who we are, and why we are here.
Yom Kippur’s chief aim, atonement, Is only effectively achieved by apprehending, admitting
confronting our anxiety, acknowledging it is real and dare not be denied.
The rest of the year we understandably employ all the stress reduction strategies at our disposal.
But Yom Kippur, this holiest of all days, is the ultimate in anxiety induction. In case you did not notice the sacred stressors…let me sketch them out.
On this Day of Awe, we cut out all of life’s distractions and focus in on what matters Rather than looking
out at others, we attempt to truly see ourselves, not what we look like on the outside, but who we are inside…and, it goes without saying, who we are not. The character flaws and moral failings, the shortcomings and indiscretions regularly repressed, often ignored, are now laid bare, staring us in the face, calling out to us to undertake the intense introspective process that leads to inner questioning, thoughtful contemplation, and to making the necessary life changes which will hopefully put us on a path to becoming our truest/best selves… This whole experience, what Mel Brooks would call: “High Anxiety! “And if all that’s not enough, here’s the kicker: this state of self-induced anxiety is not just meant for our Atonement Day alone.
In his NYT best-selling Memoir on Anxiety of almost a decade ago, Monkey Mind, Daniel Smith, Prof of English at the College of New Rochelle Explores the socio-historic and philosophic impact of anxiety through his own lifelong struggle. But the op-ed he penned with the book’s debut poses the real question for us: “Do the Jews Own Anxiety?”
Stereotypical as it may be Prof. Smith [a Jewish Smith BTW]Pointing out the famed literary figures from Tevya to Alexander Portnoy to Woody Allen’s self-styled Alvie Singer, the neurotic, self-conflicted Jew bearing a striking resemblance to anti-Semitic imagination,
Beneath the neuroses lies a counterintuitive truth, as Smith puts it: “Others may see his anxieties as a mark of inferiority, but [because of them] he is the hero of the tale, the most complex, fully ensouled one in the story. And since he’s defined above all else by his tendency toward anxiety, that tendency takes on the quality of a virtue.” Are we meshuganeh to hold up such inner angst, painful as it can be, as somehow purposeful?
Though no people have a monopoly, Jewish anxiety just may be woven into the fabric of our being, an intrinsic piece of the non-transferrable price that comes with being part of our peoplehood. Smith suggests 2 possible reasons: First, as a Jew you are the repository for 4,000 years of collective memory, Carrying on your shoulders the hopes for our people’s survival. No pressure, but you are the human bridge we must cross to make it to our people’s tomorrow. Second, as Jews, we live within the question. From the rabbis of the Talmud to Jewish life/learning today, we scrutinize and interpret, we discuss and debate. We argue and argue, and eventually agree to disagree. The spirit of our people lies in knowing there may not be a definitive answer. Ambiguity is the prism through which we perceive reality.
After convincingly building his case, Prof Smith leaves us in the end more conflicted [and ostensibly more anxious] than when he began. “There’s a whole history of claiming that anxiety, for all its pain, is a sign that the person who struggles with it is more alive to life’s contradictions…and exists in a higher state of being than those who don’t…And I am here to tell you: This is a really dangerous position to accept.”
To claim a person’s anxiety is somehow virtuous, or to intimate that depression [and other mental health challenges] are desirable is ridiculous, wrong, even downright dangerous. Such clinically diagnosed disorders require the treatment of trained medical professionals, and demand our serious attention…
BUT so too does our spiritual state of well-being: That is the conscious awareness of the angst we share which makes us who we are, and helps us grow into our most sacred selves, living out our highest/true life-purpose.
Twenty-five years ago, the great Talmudist and spiritual teacher Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz wrote a piece in Parabola magazine, “To Strive Toward Spirit.” At the time, it was countercultural if not unsettling. Most folks didn’t get it. Today, it underscores the Spiritual Anxiety that fuels our faith. As Steinsaltz says
“Of course, the quest for inner peace is old as mankind itself. Nevertheless, there is room to question this pursuit of peace of mind…A life of struggle can be relieved of pressure and anxiety, thinking we have achieved inner peace, yet life remains meaningless.” Noting the meaning of our name—Yisrael: the Sacred Strugglers, Steinsaltz thus explains: “While stress is likely to be unpleasant, as long as there is struggle, there’s a chance for valuable change. No spiritual ladder can be ascended without constant striving.”
What this wise teacher is suggesting is our doing the daily dance, the “turmoil two-step,” between the world the way it is and the way it ought to be. It is the catchphrase of these High Holy Days,
Which is meant for every single day: “I set before you blessing and curse, life & death…Choose Life!...”
HOW?...
Steinsaltz gives us the formula through which to live out our faith, as he put it: “Our question should not be how to escape this perpetual struggle but rather what form to give it…For it is a struggle in cosmic terms between chaos and creation.…the choice between good & evil. But it is preceded by an even more fundamental choice: Whether to give spiritual and moral expression to the contradiction inherent in being human or to try to ignore it…Each of us must decide where to take our stand and how to fight the battle…For without inner strife there can be no life.”
Looking out at all we see, we can’t help but fear…For the state of disregard/dysfunction, for the insanity we face, for all we need to fix. But being Jewish/Yisrael helps us look beyond the anxiety. The most important thing is on the other side of fear, for there we can find a faith to forge a world we cannot yet see…
I remember sitting in Spiritual Counseling in Rabbinic School, w/Dean Paul Steinberg, a rabbi/psychiatrist who taught that our goal was to be: “The Non-Anxious Presence” in serving our people. I nodded, pretending to understand, but didn’t know what he meant.My stream of consciousness went something like: You want us to go into the most intense, tense life moments
people have and be cool as a cucumber…really!?
It was Dr Leonard Kravitz who gave us the truth, me, Billy & Richard Baroff, During our 4th year seminar in The Guide for the Perplexed. Always spouting Yiddish phrases when he wanted to convey his kishkes, He said rabbis can only cope by “taking it to the buttons, not to the heart.”
We looked doubtful as to how that was even possible, as one of us whispered: How?...
To which Dr Kravitz, leaning toward the three of us in a whisper, Replied: “You can’t.” Quoting one more Yiddish proverb, he translated: “If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not human.”
Our mandate seems a bit meshuganeh, but it makes us who we are: Yisrael—A people in perpetual life-struggle, not stressed out because we feel helpless, but wrestling w/ this world because we hurt, struggling because we still remain hopeful.
Master teacher Rabbi Jonathan Sacks who left us this past year understood the uniqueness of our people’s mission: “For Judaism, faith is cognitive dissonance, the discord between the world that is and the world as it ought to be. That tension, that struggle has been the energizing mainspring of Jewish life from the time of Abraham & Sarah to today.”
The struggle means seeing the disparity, the insularity, the inequity, the senseless hate, the injustice…The struggle means feeling the indignity, the inhumanity, the hunger, the denial, the desperation, the hurt…the struggle means doing whatever we can, simple acts of grace/goodness To show kindness, to connect through compassion, to stand against indifference, to celebrate difference, to lead with love. The struggle means feeling the fear, but seeing beyond it. For we do, indeed, have a choice: To witness the disregard, the disrepair, to face the fear, denying it is there, OR anxiety-provoking as the present moment might feel, to decide, courageously, defiantly, to bring light, and so choose life.
In the midst of the darkest ‘night,’ a young psychiatrist in Vienna was studying suicidal kids and discovered that the key to helping them surmount their struggles was to empower them to find a sense of life-meaning, to help them know they were part of something bigger which brought shared purpose… collective hope.
Victor Frankl, deported soon thereafter to Auschwitz, survivor and famed author of Man’s Search for Meaning had actually written another book before the war. Or, at least, what would have been a book… Wanting to document his theory that life meaning can help us endure virtually any hardship, Frankl wrote up his notes, all his research on transcending teen suicide into a typed manuscript which, just before he was deported, Frankl sewed into the lining of his overcoat. After all, it was his only copy…and he had to keep it very close. Arriving in the death camp, the Nazi’s ordered him to remove his coat…He begged, but they tore it off him…and threw it on the ash heap…All he so treasured, all his research gone up in smoke. In its place Frankl was given a torn and tattered old coat, the possession of a Jew who’d been sent to the gas chambers. Putting it on, Frankl found a piece of paper hidden inside.
It was a page torn from the prayer book—the Shema. “How else could I interpret the coincidence,” he later wrote, “than to live what I had written…to unearth life meaning even now.” That torn page remained in Frankl’s coat pocket every day in the camps—a testament to his survival, a reminder that even with death surrounding, in the face of world despair he could still find a way to choose life…
We too have a prayer sewn into the lining…not of our coats, but our spirits…a two-word daily-task, a resolution that revives us: Uvacharta Ba-Chayim—choose life!
Looking about at the chaos and confusion, a reality that brings lots of anxiety, a world so far from whole, may the spiritual angst we feel be that springboard, as it helps us to live out the meaning of our name: taking on the sacred struggle every single day, hurt by the inhumanity and so, moved to help,
May we build a more humane, holy tomorrow, sustained by the secret: awaking in the middle of the night, fearful and anxious as we feel, we are not alone.
For hope can never be lost so long as we see it, so long as we find it in each other. The most important thing is on the other side of fear…
So, this New Year, may our struggle be…for life!
AMEN
