Anam Cara

The Anxious Presence

There are anxious times in every life. These are times of trembling. Your confidence and security evaporates. What lies ahead of you seems brooding and threatening. Because we live in space, anything can approach and assail us. Because we live in time, there is always an interim period between us and what is coming. When we grow anxious, we fill up that interim with every imaginable disaster. Our fantasy turns wild and dark. Then when the dreaded event comes, it is never as bad as we have imagined and we are hugely relieved. We find again our natural poise. Some people make a habit of anxiousness. Somehow, they have slipped into a mode of permanent worry. When they enter a room, they bring an aura of anxiousness that darkens the company and installs a certain gloom. If the others present attempt to continue their liveliness of presence, the anxious presence withdraws deeper into itself and looms in the room like an accusation. Such people may have great lives, but they feel little of their lives’ joy or happiness. It is so difficult for such people to find any inner distance from their anxiousness. To them, it is serious and ultimate. There is no humour or any sense of irony. Trying to force themselves out of it often only enforces it. Sometimes paying too much attention to it only confirms it as a condition for them. It is lovely to see a person liberate himself from this. Somehow it dawns on a person that it is not a condition at all, rather this anxiousness is something he does to himself. With this recognition already a huge breakthrough is achieved. When a person explores further and asks why he needs to punish himself in this way, he is already on his way to peace. He stops punishing himself and gradually the occasional smile begins to transform the anxious countenance. And laughter may not be far away!