It’s a good thing. It’s a crippling thing. It can inspire agency. It can take a life.
Anxiety: the poster child for Paradox
For so many reasons, most obvious our dependence upon constantly updating information that unsettles at best and terrifies at worst, we post-modern humans have created and are perpetuating The Age of Anxiety. Anxiety is why so many streaming services are successful; they are the massive technological equivalent of the memorable late-70s and 80s commercial’s catch phrase:
“Calgon! Take me away!”
A water softener in warm bath water may reduce, at least temporarily, the anxieties generated by family and professional life. Water, the universal solvent, has spiritual and emotional power when we are open to its metaphorical as well as practical cleansing abilities. Unlike technological replacements which often leave a highly activated human nervous system even more charged, a bath, shower, or plunge into an icy pool physically and emotionally lowers sensations of stress if such activities are chosen and feel good to the chooser.