It’s Okay to be Afraid

The suffering is in the mind. The mind. In the mind. Witness it from your spiritual heart. — Ram Dass

In my nightmare, I was shut in the house with my family and friends. I had cleaned everything — because that’s what I do now — but to my horror, I started noticing strange, muddy paw prints along the floors and walls. How did they get in? I thought, wildly. Countless cat’s feet had tracked mud everywhere. But they weren’t supposed to be able to get in. I looked out the window, into a miserable, grey rain, and there they were: feral cats, hundreds of them. They howled and snarled, fighting and fucking like cats do, circling the house tighter and tighter. There was no way to keep them out. I woke up sweating and cold, convinced I had a fever, completely frozen in the grip of dread.

Fear is nothing new to the human race, although it may be new to us in this current moment. It’s different from anxiety. Anxiety is a low-level hum in the background of our brains that keeps us on edge for reasons we don’t really understand. When we try to pinpoint why we’re anxious, for the most part, we can’t. It might have to do with being overworked or overtired, getting yelled at by our boss or honked at in traffic, or being stuck in traffic in the first place. For some of us it’s a state of being: we’re just anxious because we’re anxious. We forget to breathe, and that cues our nervous system to…