DISQUIET
I’m not always anxious, but when I do get anxious, I get very anxious; and you will understand my reasoning, for there is no better cause for anxiety than failure; and there is no failure greater than the end and collapse of your identity; that is, the destruction of your foundations, the end of those beliefs you hold dearest, the frustration of your worldview’s essence: that venerable temple’s end will spell total destruction - and subsequent moral suicide, unless some saving grace suddenly appear. And, yet, without such a temple, without such foundations, beliefs, essences, views, and faiths, your existence is basically meaningless: thus, we are forced to build fragile temples for ourselves, which are cruelly and continually subjected to never-ending attack by the absurdity of life’s demands: demonic paradoxes, offenses coated with poisonous rust, existential crises, the fibrous aerosols of confusion … Every day, we are at war, a cold war with the far-away spirits of life and death.
Years ago, when I was still a teenager, I was taking an exam. The night and the morning before, I was feeling a crushing feeling of despair that seemed to be tattering my internal organs slowly. I was fitfully trying to memorize everything I needed to, but I was very distracted, now curling up in exasperation, now pacing, moving, and twitching about to release my neurotic stress - and perhaps this was more natural than not, since the exam was a final in a very important year of school. Eventually, I could not study anymore, so I went to bed, where I spent the next thirty minutes staring into the darkest corner of my room, sure that the following day, I would fail. That is, the following day, I would get below a certain standard I set for myself, which I am loth to cross. Indeed, the following day, I did get below that standard - for the 100 items of the exam, I got 4 incorrect. Afterwards, there was nothing I could do but say that it’s fine, but I could not bear the scorn of people who expected me to get a hundred - said a relative afterwards, “What, nephew? It was a multiple-choice exam, and still you got 4 wrong?” He said it, laughing, and slapped my back good-naturedly, but his words shot deeper than he knew or probably intended. Outwardly I grinned at him and nodded, but inwardly I rolled my eyes and sneered. I deeply hate - I hate people who say - no, not hate, but it is simply an addition to my stress - as if the temple-builder needs an audience to mock him for him to build a better wall.
Later on, I asked my father what he thought. “Well, couldn’t you do better?” he asked me. I shook my head no. He shrugged dismissively. “Well, then no use worrying about it. If you couldn’t do anything about it, then you couldn’t. But try to be more careful next time.” This response tortured me endlessly for the rest of the day. I think I was aiming for an acknowledgement of the 96 other items that I got right - some encouragement. I think I was perhaps aiming for a less dismissive tone. But the inference I made was that my father thinks that my freedom to succeed is limited, an assertion which I consider to be an attack on my identity. I considered the absurdity: when I said no, I couldn’t do better, my father dismissed it and easily accepted my apparent lack of skill, which irked me. But if I said yes, I could have done better, he would have looked at me questioningly and asked why I didn’t do better, which implicitly reflects on some moral failing of mine, which would have also annoyed me. Such unsolvable paradoxes irritate me to the core. I concluded that the only way to avoid such paradoxes is to never make such mistakes again, to build my temple perfectly, so that it may be invincible against all such odds. Thus, to me, each little threat, even four little questions, is a dangerous terror - even the ant that wags its antennae against my temple must be crushed. Each little flaw in my effort, each little decrease in my performance, must be rooted out like weeds and burnt. This was the mindset I entered into adulthood with as I continued fortifying, decorating, and preserving my inner temple.
I was talking to an old lady about something related the other day. How I came to meet her: I have an interest in botany, and one day, a week after I moved into my new neighborhood, I was observing some of the vines and flowers that were hanging over my neighbor’s wall. She hobbled out of her gate and spotted me, and we spoke at length. She was a real gardening and plant expert, and I was impressed. I expounded long about the science behind flowers and vegetables, and their germination and structural formation. It seemed that we both enjoyed the encounter, and thus we repeat it often. She lets me into her yard to have some tea (she drinks the tea, I remain with water), where we talk as good friends. It was very nice for me to have someone to talk to, and she was very pleased to have someone to talk to her.
That day, I happened to have been explaining a few things about philosophy to her. I am no philosopher: I have only read two books on the subject. However, it interested me greatly. The subject also allowed me to clarify some of my own feelings on the universe. Presently, I was reflecting on a kind of humanism. As she listened, I expressed at length about the freedom divinely afforded to individuals and the enormous power we have over everything else in the universe, and how our God-given rational agency is what sets apart man from beast. I continued with how we have a profound responsibility to exercise this gift of free will, and how passion and ambition are its supports. I betrayed some of my own personal thoughts by slipping in mentions of some of my own ambitions and goals.
She nodded good-naturedly after my monologue. “Son, if there’s anyone I know who that philosophy applies to, it’s you: I know you’ll get whatever it is you put your mind to,” she said, smiling. I was very pleased. I continued: individuals are set in a framework of meritocracy: meaning, the universe’s essence is that of perfection, merit, and, in the end, determination. What individuals are tasked with is their transcendence from an imperfect, animalian existence to the ideal, rational, perfect existence, which is done within the confines of society first. After reaching that point, though, you may find an elite group of individuals with whom you may critique, control, and shape society for the better.
For some reason, she started chuckling. I looked at her questioningly, and she said, “Nothing, son, it’s just that you young ones are becoming so ambitious - but don’t worry yourself over it.” I wondered why she thought I was worrying myself over this. I decided to continue and tell her that there is plenty of evidence that that is the meaning of being an individual, because this world is a meritocratic world where knowledge, competition, prestige, credits, and survival of the fittest thrive. I then went on to give a short description of Darwinian evolution and how nature naturally selects for those with traits that are best adapted to their particular environment. In the case of humans, they are the divinely chosen anomaly, the most widespread species who have proven time and time again that their only environment, substrate, and habitat is the universe itself, the fabric of rational reality, unlike the lesser beasts who are more often than not specifically adapted to only one material biome, and who definitely cannot transcend past their beastly existence into the plane of ideals. Therefore, individuals must necessarily turn themselves into quasi-omnipotent beings in order to adapt best to the demands of our enlightened version of the universe. To deny this is irresponsible.
She nodded and told me, “Dear, don’t expect too much out of yourself.” She laughed. “I’ve been there before, I’ve been ambitious in the vigor of my youth, but it made me anxious and made me waste a lot of my life.Make sure you don’t lose sight of the other things that matter.”
I shrugged and said maybe. When I was younger I would’ve fought for my side, but I’ve gotten mellower as I aged, or maybe I just didn’t want to offend my friend. To be honest, I didn’t really know whether she actually understood anything I was saying, but either way, I excused myself, thanked her heartily for the tea, and left.
I didn’t go straight home, but rather decided to wander about town for a little bit. During that, I got a mysterious pang of anxiety and vertigo (not the disease, just general dizziness). This naturally happens to me sometimes, ever since I was a child, but I don’t know why. I theorized that this is the side-effect of my constant anxious reflections on the future. It is not frequent but very annoying when it happens: a waste of stress on a non-existent foe. I shook my head and focused on walking.
When I started getting nauseous, I decided to go home. This had never happened before. I hoped to heaven that I didn’t throw up on the sidewalk. I then became anxious that perhaps I had developed high-blood pressure or something similar - I’ve heard of extreme stress and anxiety causing that disease, and its symptoms being nausea and dizziness. Every once and a while, I’ve worried that the pressure I put on myself would result in that. I tried not to think about it as I walked and tried to stop the world from seeming to curve around me.
Thankfully, by the time I reached my house, the nausea dissipated. But it was replaced by an oppressive pit of emptiness and depression. This, too, has become natural for me: sometimes I become sad, demotivated, and visibly oppressed by some feeling of melancholy, which usually comes due to something frustrating my purpose or identity - but what? Was it my talk with my neighbor? No, I didn’t think so, although usually the reason I felt depressed was so vague and muddled that I would never be able to discern it while I was feeling depressed. So, it could very well be. Instead of trying to rationalize it, I decided to defy it: what am I to be depressed about, when I am a free, rational, meritorious human being living in a world of merit and spirit? Nothing can defeat me, if I recognize these things! So, why am I depressed?
I drove further. I looked to the future, to all the hopes and dreams I had for myself. One day, my temple will become more than a temple: it shall be a golden monolith, inspiring and astounding, and people will look on it as the model for excellence, perfection, and beauty. By God, this shall happen, I swear by it.
But, as I was saying that, I seemed to perceive in front of me all the world’s paths winding across an extreme chasm, and I perceived their fragility: they were made of glass. I began to see each of them shatter, one after the other, with a single tap. Their shards fell into the darkness, shooting multicolored rays of light on the rocky walls before they disappeared forever. I was brought down to my knees at the edge of the cliff, and the ground seemed to recede from beneath my feet with a spinning sensation. What can be sure, if it is all so fragile? I recalled again my shameful 96% on that exam from years ago: could I really have done better? Or, sometimes, are mistakes unavoidable - from the absurd randomness of the universe?
And another strange vision. The temple I visualized, which represented my goals - and even ME IN MYSELF - seemed to grow bigger and bigger, until it hit quite an uncanny size, superimposing itself on the calm sky, stretching unnaturally into the heavens, seeming to flatten and shrink every tree or protrusion on the natural ground … A queer sense of megalophobia engulfed me as I pondered the despondent, unreachable majesty of the golden building, whose features melted away as it grew and grew, so that only a shiny, blank facade confronted me as I looked. The light seemed unnaturally diffuse all around me.
By now, in the real world, I was restlessly pacing, talking to myself with wild gesticulations. It was becoming overwhelming, and I could feel my brain shutting down. That has only happened a few times in my life, in public even, and the traumatic shame that came from those events disgusted me. To stop myself from reliving that, I reached for a pen and drove it into my hand.
I didn’t begin bleeding, but the pain as the skin started to break was so great that it shot me out of my melancholic paralysis. I was up and going again, excited by the sudden pain: but, impulsively, I angrily shot the pen out of my hand as if it were the one that hurt me and not myself. I yelled that it could not control me, could not frustrate my God-given freedom, to bastardize the respect due to me as an existent, conscious entity! I paced around some more, leaned on a wall, and sighed. What freedom is this, that I require a pen to make me upright? I stayed silent for a few minutes. I thought I was starting to turn crazy. But then, I’ve thought that countless times before.
I looked at the back of my hand and saw that it apparently was bleeding a little bit. I put a band-aid on it and decided to get to bed straight afterwards, trusting in the welcome of the morning to quell the unexpected anxieties of that evening, as it always did. To aid me, I took a sleeping pill. I did not dwell on the absurdity of that action.
Unfortunately, I would not wake up happy, for I dreamt a terrible dream that night: I was near that chasm again, except there were no glass bridges over it, but a lone cord that reached out from its center and tied itself around my waist. It slowly retracted into the abyss. As it did, I tried to untie it - it felt cold and slimy and smelled smoky, like a long piece of alien flesh, and I was unsuccessful. Its pull kept causing me to slip and stumble as I tried to work. Eventually, desperate, I tried to claw at the soil to anchor myself and force the cord to snap, but it just kept pulling me. The soil was black, wispy, and dead, and with only my fingers in I could feel the bedrock underneath it. Completely powerless, my fear increasing, in one last moment of desperation to recover my freedom, my dignity from the deathly entity in the pit, I clung to the rocky edge with my fingers, but the slow force of the cord was unable to be thwarted, and, my heart beating up to my ears, my fingers slipped.
I woke up from the nightmare with a start, sweating and breathing hard. To add insult to injury, I had only been sleeping for three hours. I shook my head and bent over despairingly. I didn’t sleep for the next three hours.