It’s a weight – anxiety. Like a gravitational surge. It feels like what the inside of a black hole would be. Stretching your soul eternally until it’s a noodle that keeps getting stretched without abandon. You have no say in its vigor, and you’re no stranger to its lasting effects. Like a guest at a party in which you’ve engaged in a conversation – you can neither ask them to leave, for fear of being rude, and you cannot foresee them leaving because you keep feeding it with your attention. And so, it stays.
It is, for all intents and purposes, something we all feel from time to time. A surge of emotion that is so raw that any amount of sushi we have eaten in our lives cannot prepare us for the uncooked rawness that it has upon our soul.
The flesh cringes with a ripple to rid itself of the toxins that it brings – yet we are absent of any anecdote to cure ourselves of this dread.
Don’t ask how or why – rather ask yourself what is your anti? What is the counter measure to the demon that sits atop your chest excruciatingly crushing your interest in this life. This weight that we’ve dubbed as “anxiety” is no mere sum of our circumstances, but a virus we’ve let in because we’ve become lazy with our defenses. The walls are manned, but by outdated soldiers and philosophies. If you want to fight a war that is waged presently with guns, you cannot defend with the wooden spikes that once helped through the tough times. Viruses evolve, and anxiety is the HIV of your psyche.
There is this mindset in the start-up industry that can be a starting point for your journey in this battle to take back your life from certain uncertainty – a.k.a: anxiety. In that particular industry, the mantra is (I am ofcourse paraphrasing no particular person, but an industry:
“Seek out your passion – the thing you’d do in life even if you were not paid – and do that. Get good at it. Really Good. And once you’re good, you’ll become a master. That passion in your work will outshine those in it just for the money. Find that passion – master it, and you will find success.”
Your passion is your cure; it is your protagonist. It is the hero in this tragedy, and the means to purge you of this burden. It will pump your willpower with strength enough to lift this dismal weight of hopelessness from your very heart and soul. Find it. And not only will you lose one bad thing, but you will have gained a good insight into yourself.
What builders call the spine of a roof is dubbed the “beam.” An object large enough to be the base where all other rafters lean on to combine their strength and unite in one solid foundation to be a tenacious canopy which gives birth to the roof and the exterior frame of your house and roof.
Find your beam. Otherwise that weight will crush you.