I Caught Myself Being a Complete and Total Hypocrite

Only real life can outshine anxiety

It’s vital that we come out of our shell on a regular basis and engage with our immediate environment.

Those are the literal words I was typing for an article when I heard my wife’s phone ring in the kitchen, which she answered on speakerphone.

A friend was calling to say that she and her kid were going kayaking at the local lake under the light of the full moon. They wanted to know if our son would like to join them.

I was down the hall in my office, settled in for the evening to happily write an article that was all about the importance of unplugging, walking away from your device, taking a break, and connecting with others.

The last thing I expected was to have my rhetoric tested in real life.

My anxiety is lightning fast and particularly athletic. I have Olympic-caliber anxiety. It can sprint far into the future in the time it takes others to sneeze. It can leap to epic conclusions without breaking a sweat and move mountains of logic aside to create an unhindered path for baseless panic.

So before the kayaking invitation could register as ordinary or logical thought forms, my anxiety had sprinted far into the future and started to make calculations.

First of all, our son was only twelve at the time, and certainly wouldn’t be going anywhere on his own. So having our son join them really meant . . . son and a yet-to-be-determined parent.

According to the brilliant mental wizardry of my anxiety, I instantly recalled that my son has two parents, and that I am one of them. Therefore, there was a fifty percent chance I was about to have my cozy writing ritual be replaced by an unplanned kayaking trip in the dark at the end of an already full day.

This same yet-to-be-named parent would need to drag our kayak out from under the garage, gather all the gear, get the kayak tied down to the roof of the car, drive to the lake, unload the kayak and the gear, and carry it down to the lake.

My wife is often up for such adventures, but tonight I could hear her hesitate. I could also hear the rhythmic creaking of the house floorboards which I knew was the bouncing weight of my son enthusiastically jumping up and down next to her silently mouthing . . .

“Please can we go, please can we go, please can we go??!!”

Nothing had really happened yet, and no decisions had been made, but my anxiety supercomputer continued to build its prediction model of my approaching future at lightning speed.

In a nano second it had already done the further computations . . .

• My wife would say no and then a 110-pound ball of excitement with tousled blond hair would burst into my office asking if I could take him.

• I would feel put upon being asked to stop my flow, resentful at my wife that I would either have to say “yes” or be the final “no,” and mad at the friend’s mom for dropping this on us at the last minute late at night.

• My son would see my hesitation and I’d watch the innocent excitement drain from his face. Next would come his sad puppy dog eyes which he’d cast directly upon my soul in an attempt to sway my decision.

• I’d turn away to focus on the downsides of this plan, which would be that instead of getting my work done or having dinner I’d be driving through the dark into a state park, all for the dubious privilege of offering my bare legs up as an evening meal for a swarm of blood-thirsty mosquitoes.

• I’d finally say “no” and my son would then be sullen and disappointed straight through the rest of the evening and we’d all go to bed feeling crummy.

Keep in mind, all of this super-computing had just taken place in my imagination within 1.8 seconds of my wife’s hesitating to say, “YES.”

I’d just been writing at length about the concept of power. My article was making the point that we must disconnect from borrowed power if we wish to find personal power.

Personal power?

Yeah. You know. Little things like the willingness to take a risk, try something new, set our agendas aside, be spontaneous, and respond instead of react to life as it unfolds around us.

Because I had just been focused on the article, the irony of my wanting to keep writing about developing personal power using my computer, instead of being willing to live it by embracing spontaneity and risk, was not lost on me.

This small window of self-awareness presented itself as an exit door out of the predictability of my anxiety-prison.

Suddenly, for just a moment, I could see that the entire scenario my anxiety had produced was all made up. It didn’t have to go that way. I could make another choice.

2.5 seconds had elapsed since I heard my wife hesitate on the phone, but if I wanted to get off the anxiety train I’d have to jump right then and there.

So from my office down the hall I shouted out, “Let’s Go!” with an enthusiasm I didn’t even know I had.

And so we went to the lake.

As it turned out, there were no mosquitoes in sight, and floating in a kayak beneath the moonlit sky was a thousand times better than tapping away at my keyboard by screen-light about a concept that, instead, I actually had a chance to experience.

We hit our pillows that night happy, connected, and joyful. And I nearly missed it. Because anxiety is fast.

I don’t even know, nor do I really care, if it’s possible to slow anxiety down. But what I do know is that the human spirit is even faster than anxiety. And it’s carried on the breath of one word.

Yes.

We’re often told that our human advantage over other species is our ability to think.

But I’m not so sure about that.

What if our gift is the capacity to be conscious, and to transcend our survival thinking in moments when we’re paying attention?

What if our humanness was actually defined by how responsive we are to those glorious windows of human experience and connection that open themselves to us?

I’d like to be more human.

I’d like to live with a faster “yes”.