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Good News And Bad News



The good thing about angst (which is a bit like saying “the good thing about plane crashes … ” or “the up-side of a root canal …”) is that realizing you suffer from it brings a huge sense of relief because you’ve at last managed to put a name to the source of a lot of life’s trials and tribulations. It’s like a new doctor listening to you rattle off a list of worrying and seemingly unconnected symptoms that your previous doctor only managed to scratch his head (but still charge you money) over, and saying, “Oh, that sounds like a case of _________!” A simple test and he’s right: nothing but a straightforward case of _________.  Whew! Relief! There’s a reason for it all! Amid the shamble that’s been your state of mind there’s suddenly a shiny filing cabinet on hand to give some order to all the sundry elements of the situation, or at least a dog-eared duct-taped box to put all the bits and pieces in. Finally, it’s the devil you know. All this from a name! All that’s needed is for the nice new doctor to prescribe a pill or a lotion or a course of leeches that will fix the problem and it’s all hunky dory from now on; an illegible scribble on his little pad and then off to the chemist, Community Services Card in hand and a spring in the step.

That’s when the bad news kicks in.



The bad thing about angst is that once you’ve identified it, dealing further with the problem is like trying to juggle greased eels or catch yourself blinking in a mirror. As a sidebar: I’m not talking about the short bouts of angst that most people will encounter at some point in their lives, but the plague of wearing angst like a thick, heavy coat in all weathers, of having it as a constant companion, like freckles or blue eyes or big feet. This is angst proper, you could say; Heidegger et al would spell it with a capital ‘a’, but I would feel like a pompous prat for doing so. It seems a bit dodgy to give that much credence to my version of the malady. To brazenly flog the illustration, the nice new doctor, having successfully identified the problem, has now started scratching his head too. He momentarily scrabbles through all his big books with the gruesome plates and impossibly big words in them, shrugs, and finally admits with a somewhat sheepish grin that his Med School training had been a bit of a lark, really, more an excuse to live the life of a student (read: get pissed at every available opportunity) than to actually advance his knowledge of all things medical.  From there it’s a slow and sad wander out of the doctor’s office to stand blinking into the bright sunshine, script-less and somewhat dispirited.



What’s In A Name?



That’s not to say that there is a shortage of solutions on offer – merely mention this problem to anyone and then batten down the hatches for the hailstorm of advice and guidance and opinion coming your way. Freshets of alleged wisdom and insight will spring up spontaneously about you like the verbal equivalents of the healing waters of Lourdes, friends and relatives tripping over themselves in their attempts to put you right. But rather than helping, these ‘solutions’ leave you feeling like a chubby person in a Queen Street clothing store: everything on offer looks nice, but nothing comes within an interplanetary-scale gap of fitting. There’s a reason for all this and it all boils down to semantics.

A lot of people confuse angst with worry. Worry and angst are related, but are more like second cousins than siblings. Worry is an emotion that tends to have a specific focus: you worry that you might sleep through your alarm; you worry that your ass might get too big to fit into the seats at the McCafe; you worry that TV might be completely overrun by lame ‘reality’ shows and house makeover programs. In such cases as this, the worry dissipates when you manage to wake up on time, or slip into a McCafe seat without sucking in your breath and turning purple, or turn on the TV and find (to your relief) a documentary about the sex lives of wild animals or politicians (or both). Angst, however, involves a similar unease and concern and consternation, but is minus the luxury of a focal point. And a flipside of there being no focal point is there being nothing that can function as a solution, to dissipate the feeling, to relieve the pressure.



A Royal Pain In The Angst



That lack of clear focus engenders a certain genus of pain, but not a ‘real’ pain (as your friends and family would understand it), a pain as authentic or worthy of commiseration as, say, losing a toe under the lawn mower or accidentally severing a finger while trying to julienne carrots too fast just because you saw Jamie Oliver do it, or losing a loved one to a nasty disease, or being made redundant. It’s like breathing in and not being able to breathe out; it’s akin to suddenly forgetting how to blink and feeling that rising sting as your eyes slowly dry out; it’s in the vein of realizing that a nearby radio is tuned to a noxious easy-listening station and you have no way of blocking it out or changing it. It’s a sneaky, gutter-level, low-intensity pain that doesn’t grab you by the throat, but neither does it ever seem to let up.

You feel too embarrassed to express this discomfort to others. It would feel like you’re trying to make a common cold seem like a cause worthy of a telethon; no-one’s died, nothing’s been cut off, and you know parts of the world are afflicted with wars and famines and natural disasters and therefore jam-packed with people in real pain, but still …

The upshot of all this is that you can add to the general pain of angst:

(a) the nagging guilt of suspecting you’re nothing more than a navel-gazing drama queen, and

(b) the pervasive fear that others will find out what’s bugging you and call you a navel-gazing drama queen.



Moving Targets



Because of the confusion most well-adjusted people have over the difference between angst and worry, their advice is often as effective as tossing you a few tennis balls to juggle along with the oil-slicked eels. Because angst has no real focal point there is no ground gained in trying to offer specific situation-based solutions because by the time they are introduced to the scene, the cross hairs of angst have moved on to a new situation. Analyzing angst is like a watching a risibly indecisive marksman at work: if one is seemingly angst-ridden over, say, the prospect of ill-health, solid and evidenced assurances of good health will only move the sights to, for example, the escapable immanency of death of oneself or a loved one and all its uncertainty. Or the anxiety over being jobless and, worse, lacking the basic capacity to function in an employable way. Or the gnawing sense of personal uselessness and waste, as if purpose and potential are mere ghosts or myths. Or the dismay of doubting that one is worthy of their share of food, oxygen, housing, the very necessities of life, let alone the luxuries of joy, fulfillment, and peace in the heart. Pick your target, then watch it run like hell. Or rather, the targets of angst are like buses: there’ll be another one along in five minutes.



Conclusion



This story finishes rather abruptly here, pretty much, like a novel missing its closing chapters or a standup routine lacking a punch line. I feel like I’ve identified the culprit behind a lot of my issues but haven’t gotten as far as working out a cure or solution, though I have at least nutted out that the tennis balls aren’t going to be much help. The good news is that I have a feeling there is a solution: I suspect learned behaviour is lurking like a mugger in the shadows somewhere behind this situation. I think somewhere early on in life I learned to fear and dread and be anxious as a default response to not so much the individual and separate and specific aspects of life, but living life in its entirety. Life itself is what I’m afraid of, worried about, anxious over, and in a constant state of dread about.

How did I get this way? As I’ve implied by tossing the term ‘learned behaviour’ about, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t born this way, so I probably picked it up like a tic or a habit, an unconscious routine for my mind to follow, or a script for my day-to-day thought-life to take its cue from. A behavioural hand-me-down. Blah, blah, blah. My question is: If my angst is learned behaviour and it’s true that most things that are learned can be un-learned, doesn’t that mean there’s a hope to be shot of it one day?

So this is as far as I’ve managed to reason. I’m feeling equal measures pleased (that I’ve given a name to this issue) and frustrated (that I’ve painted myself into a corner, re: a solution).