This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
Under pressure
Under pressure
Pressure
-Under Pressure
David Bowie, Queen
During this morning's doomscroll on Drudge, a somewhat more manageable experience since last January's inauguration, I came across this nugget suggesting my neighbors are a little less sanguine behind the scenes than it might appear.
The headline has me wondering why someone who's stressed over Covid would sit in a dentist's chair in the first place, but no matter. Personally, I'm a compulsive cheek chewer, probably one of the riskier and more destructive compulsions one might adopt in the absence of a pack of Marlboros. I also find myself clenching my teeth sometimes to make the tinnitus change notes a little, creating a ringy little ditty in my head.
This outward manifestation of a society's worries at least gives me a sense of solidarity, of communal suffering. For the better part of my adult life, there is a moment around 3 a.m. that my eyes pop open and a slide show of doom rolls through my conscience. High stakes cases with looming deadlines and potentially disastrous outcomes, worries about the law firm as a business, about that constant heartburn--has it turned into Barrett's esophagus yet? Then there is the child who's not thriving right now. And whether this time around I'm holding up my end of the deal in the most important relationship ever in my life. What does P see in you, you bald, squishy old man?
Then we telescope out to the macro--have my neighbors all gone mad? What price will I pay personally and professionally for leaping off of the MAGA train all those years ago?
Turns out, this early morning meditation of gloom and anxiety is something in which you all indulge as well, apparently.
I couldn't tell you why (although the article purports to explain), but mornings have always left a medicine ball resting on my chest. I'd imagine I was having a heart attack on the way to the office at the old law firm. The only thing that seemed to work for me to make it go away was the blessing of being immersed in difficult, solitary work like writing a brief. Or flying--as soon as the gear comes up, I'm in the moment, calm, almost jolly at the distraction. I guess that's why 3 a.m. is such a bad time--there's nothing to ground one in the present in the darkness, unless I start nudging P, but let's face it, wrestling with a mound of anxiety isn't much of an aphrodisiac. Plus, she's up at 5:20 every morning, and as I'm sitting here talking to myself on this blog she's trying to keep a 400 pound diabetic with a weak chin alive in the operating room. Mama needs her sleep.
Alone in a hotel room a couple nights ago, I figured while knowing better that maybe God's Holy Word would help me regain perspective. I pulled out my tablet in the darkness, dialed up the Episcopal Lectionary Page, and opened the first reading for that morning. Turns out it was from the Book of Numbers, and not "Buddy God" handing his chosen people a cookie and telling them it would all be okay.
If you've been to seminary, or to Father Tom's Sunday School class at HNEC, you know this is probably an old etiological campfire tale from the First Temple Period. In the attic full of religious detritus there in Jerusalem, someone noticed the caduceus, the snake wrapped around a pole, and asked one of the sons of Aaron what it was. No one could suggest in this doggedly monotheistic community that it was a relic of the days when idols and totems were part of Hebrew religious tradition. Instead, they wove a story that made the object a creation ordered by Yahweh himself, and--oh by the way--if you complain too much about your time in the wilderness running a little long, Elohim will respond to your puling with poisonous snakes who'll end your sojourn by killing you dead. And in the Hebrew understanding of the afterlife at the time, dead meant, to quote John Prine, "you're a dead peckerhead." That snakebite didn't lead to a mansion of gold, just sheol.
Okay, so religion isn't much help with all this anxiety. We can debate whether God has a plan for your life or for the arc of our society, but empirically it's pretty obvious that plan, if it exists at all, may involve something horrible happening to you. I don't find that particularly comforting, and instead give God a pass, assuming without proof His control over creation has its limits, and maybe he's making this up as he goes along just like the rest of us.
So, what helps? Exercise, which P and I have re-folded into our lives after a year away from the gym. Avoiding a boozy evening escape that leads to hangxiety, a much more aggressive soul-crusher, when my blood sugar crashes at 2 a.m. The article says talking about what's going on helps, which I guess is why I look forward to these few minutes of self-therapy most mornings.
As a guy who's done some things over these five decades and change, I've found the most potent weapon against pandemic panic is stepping back and viewing this moment in a larger context. Like everyone else, I've lived through some very difficult times. When I'd affect a shaman like serenity as we waited for a judge or jury to enter the courtroom, and a client or young lawyer would ask how I could be so calm, I'd smile and say, "I've seen worse. No one's shooting at me today."
And many, many dreadful events pepper my timeline, moments from which I thought I'd never recover. But I did. Always. Because what's the alternative?
Peg has grown fond of quoting the spy in the Tom Hanks movie "Bridge of Spies", a really great piece of cinema if you've not seen it. A Russian spy, Rudolf Abel, has been arrested in the U.S., and is being defended by James Donovan, a civil litigator like me who's played by Tom Hanks. Abel faces execution if convicted, and Donovan is struck by his sanguine demeanor.
Donovan ponders the consequences of a conviction, and asks Abel, "Aren't you worried?"
Abel's answer could form the basis for a GOE question, maybe folding in a little Reinhold Niebuhr:
"Would it help?"
Indeed. And P's right, that's the question. What's the utility of all this worry? It's the worst sort of magical thinking to imagine, as I often have in those predawn hours, that I'm rendering the apparition powerless by fixating on it, that if I break eye contact with the specter it becomes a threat.
That specter hasn't swallowed me yet, and it's had enough opportunities to do so over this life. Worrying truly won't and doesn't help. Life is good. I'm going back to NY, boarding a plane in Panama City in a few minutes. As of yesterday, I'm all vaccinated. I'm in love, and it seems she feels the same. We've assembled a coalition of the willing in our blended family, and it's such a nice tent that more seem drawn to it every day. Just smile and breath, Donk. It's all okay.
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