We all wish for safety and security.  At times like the present, after September 11, 2001, we are all very anxious, because the maintenance of the illusion of safety and security becomes almost impossible.  It is an unwanted, unwished-for truth that for us, sentient, alive beings there is no safety and security, and there never was.  Life is extremely dangerous, very fragile, always at risk.  We are all so very vulnerable.  It is a miracle that there is any duration to our existence at all.
 
 Up to a certain point in our development we are in a state of double dependency:  we are totally dependent on our environment and don't know it, are not aware of it.  We cannot yet distinguish between self and other.  There is only one.  Mother's joy is my joy, her fear is my fear, her face is my face, the love in her eyes is my well-being.  Waking up to the awareness of how utterly dependent we are on mother is a rude and terrifying moment.  Our sense of security depends on her presence, her touch, her availability.  Her absence, after even a few minutes, can threaten, with what feels like annihilation.  So, we invent, find, create a transitional object, that we can hang on to and have control over, that stands in for our absent, erratic, uncontrollable, other mother.  Like a diaper, such as Linus' blanket, or a doll, or a piece of furry, fluffy material. 

 

 What can we hang onto now?  What can we clutch that will keep our anxiety on this side of panic?  Money will do it for some; status for others; drugs, sex and rock-and-roll help.  Who, however, could reassure you?  Who could promise that you'll be safe?  Actually, reassurance feeds anxiety.  Somewhere we know that behind the reassuring tone of voice there is nothing but ignorance and uncertainty.

 

 Yukio Mishima, the Japanese author who ended his own life by ritual suicide, wrote in Sun and Steel [1970] that "No moment is so dazzling as when everyday imaginings concerning death and danger and world destruction are transformed into duty".  He trained himself to stay in the present moment, to deal with what is, without thought, without imagination.  He took up body building, fencing, boxing, meditation and martial arts.  He sought redemption through the living, breathing, flesh-and-blood body.  "Victory," he wrote, "where the mind is concerned comes from the balance that is achieved in the face of ever-imminent destruction". 

 

 What is my duty?  The word comes from the root due, meaning debt.  Age-old wisdom teaches that (i) If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And (ii) If I am for myself alone, what am I?  My duty then is twofold:  (i) I am to honor and cherish the bit of a spark of life that lives me, and (ii) I am not to make myself my aim, I am to be of service to others.  One dictionary definition of duty reads, "the conduct or acts of a person motivated by pure goodwill:  conduct that produces the greatest good".  We are in the realm of ethics. 

 

 Perhaps what Mishima realized when he urged us to transform our imaginings into duty, was that the effort to be of service is so all-engrossing that it leaves no time for self-indulgent worries, fears, anxieties.  One of my patients happened to be in New York on the day of the terrorist attacks.  Finding that he had no way to leave and return home, he volunteered his services as an MD.  Until the day that he could get a flight out of New York, he worked with the injured and dying in makeshift emergency clinics, around the clock, almost without rest.  He told me that the horror didn't strike him until after he had returned home and had time on his hands. 

 

 I tend to take refuge in the moment.  Right now all is well with me, I'm breathing, I am writing, I am alive.  I experience true gratitude for this moment, and for the fact that my children and wife are alive and well, right now.  I've been practicing this path of gratitude and taking refuge in the moment for many years now.  Because it is based on the truth, not on illusion or distraction or empty reassurance, it works.  Using my awareness of my own breathing as reassurance works because it brings my attention to here and now.  Finding refuge for/in the moment and feeling gratitude for my localized good fortune doesn't preclude the experience of profound grief for the suffering of innocent others, friends or strangers.  No, but it leaves no room for useless, ineffectual, obsessive worry and anxiety.

 

 When war is declared, when I listen to all the talk surrounding the devastating events, the major source of discomfort for me is the feeling that I am not told the truth.  I have to fight against regressive forces that arise in me.  When presidents and prime ministers talk their patronizing rhetoric, they infantilize the rest of us.  It reminds me of being a child in my family, knowing that something was going on that will have consequences that I won't like, but not being able to get the truth from my parents.  It used to fill me with dread, and it does now.  And even if I was told the truth, I wasn't given any choice in the matter.  I felt insignificant, worthless and voiceless.  And that is how I feel now.  The adults are bombing Afghanistan.  Who cares about the children?

 

 It's all politics now, power plays with/against power.  There are no principles, no ethics,  very little prudence.  This is nothing new, we've been at each other's throats as far back as history can take us.  Some inspired adhoccery might get us out of this mess sooner or later.  Whatever the outcome, it's evident that love and rationality are not common human capacities.  Fortunate are those of us who have had the good luck to meet loving, rational human beings.  I hope to meet a few more before I die.

 

Andrew Feldmár
#33 (October, 2001)

[Written for In A NutShell, the Vancouver's Mental Patients' Newsletter]