Being Alive

We sit together for dinner most nights. The kids, Mom, and I exchange stories and marvel at our differences. Depression-era advice is offered without its solicitation, a saying or two from 1943 gets inserted, and J.D. glares at anyone who says “demure”, “mindful”, or “cutesy”. We often try to explain all these new terms to Mom who shakes her head and expresses her gratitude at no longer being that young. “What’s your biggest ick?” we explained to her last night. Once she understood she answered “worrying about my children and grandchildren.”

One theme that came up in our conversations over the last few days is “anxiety” and why we have it. With the kids going back to school, the nerves are front and center. I took to Facebook earlier this week to ask readers what their thoughts were across the generations. To those who shared with me, I am so grateful. Thank you. I’m a Gen Xer and the anxiety among us was eeked out like a pressure cooker letting off a little steam. Our country was a little over 200 years old as we entered our angsty years and we, its children, inherited the scars of genocide, revolution, slavery, injustice, war, murder, industrialization, pollution, drug addiction, sexism, consumerism, and depression. Heirs to a traumatic past with no real war to call our own, we battled our demons instead while simultaneously trying to embrace the joy of living. This conflicted existence came out in our music, literature, clothing choices, hairstyles, uncloseted sexual identities, and life choices. The antiquated American dream died a slow death as the screech of the internet filled our ears; new dreams spawned into existence. We invented devices to “connect” us all only to watch them divide us instead. America and the world was reborn in less than 30 years and we are all still catching our collective, yes collective, breath.

With the technology to answer our every pondering and musing, we have become self-reliant, self-righteous, and more and more anxious everyday. Ask any doctor currently in debt to the education and grueling years of training they received and they will tell you about the many times they have been schooled by someone with a degree from WebMD. Mom is even one of these people at the age of 90. “They say that too much oxygen is a bad thing.” she once said to her cardiologist in an attempt to cut out her supplemental O2 from her list of medications. “Well, you look pretty comfortable with it so why get rid of it?” he said. As a high school teacher and a mom to high school/middle school age children, I know that there’s an epidemic of anxiety and I know that these devices are partly to blame and by “partly” I mean by about 90%. Will we wake up from this? Will we ever realize just how much of our life is wasted staring at a rectangle in our hands? I averaged 4 hours a day last week. That’s 28 hours a week, 4 days a month, and 52 days a year. At that rate, I’m on track to waste about a decade of my entire life on my phone. If my kids asked me what my biggest ick was, that would be it. No wonder why we’re all anxious, we’re not really living. The air is chilly this morning. Go out and smell summer’s vegetation on the edge of decay, touch the grass. My opinion? Our anxiety is telling us that we’re alive and being alive is no accident and certainly no small thing.

As a slice of generational baloney in this household with menopause looming and a diagnosis of OCD and generalized anxiety, I am beginning to make strides in radically embracing simplicity on a daily basis to combat the noise in my head. “Put the phone down, Steph.” I have to say to myself way too much. “Look at the trees, the dragonflies. Listen to the crickets, the crows. Smell it all. Breathe.” I say. Lately, I have been reading Leaves of Grass in an attempt to absorb as much Walt Whitman as I possibly can before my teaching year begins and I become too tired for philosophical musings of a dead man. Navigating the waters between young and old, I have turned toward writers like Thoreau, Whitman, Oliver, and others alike to see if the past has any answers for my peculiar present. I never expected to find so many answers in Walt. In fact, I have come to the most refreshing conclusion that I no longer need answers. Summer is ebbing away and I know I will miss it. For a moment, I put Whitman down and dove into the icy waters of Humarock beach. If you need to feel alive, swim where the land knows the sting of winter all too well.

Although Whitman talks extensively in the first person in his masterpiece, it truly is a work of and for others, particularly his fellow Americans living under an infant democracy. He took delight in and loved all humans—the good and wicked; he encouraged us to embrace what is near rather than long for something just out of reach. “In folks nearest to you finding also the sweetest and strongest and lovingest, Happiness not in another place, but this place..not for another hour, but this hour..” he wrote. His words take on a biblical cadence and tone, they are as close to religion I would like to get. I’m nervous about starting school next week. My stomach has been a mess alongside my kids’. Yet, I know too well that there are those beginning this year with the deep pain of loss and despair and suddenly all that anxiety seems trite and falls away with the rise of my tears. I hope, I wish, I pray they know they are not alone in this painful yet beautiful world. With the likes of Whitman to read and my own little words to offer in this attempt to achieve purpose in life, I accept anxiety today as a sign that being alive is not just survivable but awesome. Choose a place to keep your phone today, touch it less and touch grass more. Thank you, brother Jim, for reminding me of the beauty of “Being Alive”.