We Cling To Anxiety

A sudden loss of tension in our lives would be like a loss of gravity: disorienting, frightening, and cause for panic.

Why do we so often want to want? You know, like what you see some delicious food and think ‘if only I was hungry, I’d enjoy eating that’. Why wish to have hunger? Why would we crave a feeling of, well, craving — isn’t it better to have the thing than to suffer from going without it? It seems we should rather want to just be satisfied — without tension, without concern for the future, without anxiety.

There’s a minor reason for this and a major reason. The minor reason is: we remember how good it feels to satisfy the desire. Our body and our mind have a good association with getting what we want since the path to that pleasure passes through anxious desire. We are conditioned to be drawn to anxiety — it’s the bell that rings to signal the potential for treats. We salivate.

The major reason is, basically, that anxiety gives us direction in life. Flee from pain, run towards pleasure — that is our sensual compass. It points us along a path. Gravity does this, too, though we can’t opt out of that tension. To lose the tension of desire-and-anxiety would be as disorientating as losing gravity. Which way is up when there is no such thing as ‘down’? Have you seen what happens when a person can no longer feel the press of gravity? They feel ill, they…