Anxiety

Talk this evening with friends came around to the subject of extended periods of traveling the world alone. This never appealed to me as it does to some people and I am impressed by the resilience of those young people who do this as soon as they leave school in search of adventure. But then they probably didn't spend years battling with OCD; they probably see the world as exiting and full of wonderful opportunity. Whereas I have had to develop a more optimistic approach.

Following a web link I came across some stuff on sensitive people and in particular sensitive children. Whilst tacitly recognised for years this is now apparently an accepted taxonomy. All taxonomies of course need to be viewed with care but I feel I do fit the bill. Society tends to take a dim view of the sensitive so one grows armour which then needs to be stripped away or redeployed in a move towards accepting that one is basically alright. And so it is understandable that the prospect of heading off into the unknown in search of adventure, indeed the very word adventure, is likely to give rise in my mind to negative feelings. I am much more relaxed in this respect these days but my basic instinct is to view the unknown and in particular the uncontrolled with caution.

So, the sensitivity and the introspection may well help in the study and following of the Way but of course the fear and the control which it prompts can be obstacles. Stripping away the armour seems to help but I can see how this could turn into more control. This I think is the coal face of practice for me. I guess this is in my mind a bit now and I've been writing about it one way or an other in other posts.