The Quiet Dread
Overcoming the Quiet Dread
Do you get the quiet feeling of dread?
Life is slipping away, so precious, and there is something sinister approaching.
I do.
The rational thing to do is pretend. Pretend you don't care, pretend it's not real. I think that's what most balanced, sensible people do.
Not all of them. Some have seen the light; they get more comfort in doing things. These people are awesome, they are hugging trees, saving whales, battling the odds against the well-funded, well-disciplined faceless corporations and bureaucracies.
The irony is that these enemies are full of people just like me, quieting their dread because they have mortgages, school fees, holidays, gambling debts to pay. Or more starkly because they need to feed themselves and their starving children. I would do the same. Maybe?
I sort of hate them, it's hard not to; they are the enemy. It says so in the Guardian, on Fox News.
But wait a minute, that means; I am the enemy. It's all a bit messy.
When everything is going to shit, you tell yourself don't worry. That you're too insignificant.
It's someone else's problem, someone with more sense, someone with more power and heaps more money.
That way you can shout at the stupid bastards when they come on the telly.
Death is good.
It's taken me far too long to realise this. I think getting old helps. It helps a lot. It's given me that little jolt of electricity, right in the coccyx.
The cold hard truth says that I'm old and useless (in the eyes of our culture), but I am mild, I am very uncertain, and I am fed up with the dread. I want to fix it, now this very moment.
This is a good thing!
But I don't want to change my life. Living is the only thing I'm half good at and I am not about to reinvent myself for some pipe dream.
I gonna, just do something and keep on doing something and see if all the other people fed up with the dread join in. Within their boundaries, their life, doing it with their people, in their own way.
The Double Dread
Now this business of cooperating with other people, building communities. That's the worst bit, the double dread.
I'm a bit, a bit mildly eccentric. I think that's correct, and if you disagree then that's your right.
Well people like me, by which I mean specifically me. We have a big problem with this. People don't understand me (I think), well not in the way I'd like them to.
It hurts.
I have spent pretty much my entire life subconsciously devising ways to avoid this double dread. I am devilishly good at it. My reality distortion field is a magnificent construction, a shield for my insecurity.
It protects me from the weird and dangerous things, the so, so dangerous things called THEM. I mean YOU the reader, another human wot-sit. And all the other people in the world.
The very ones I want to save.
The very ones, I suspect, that make life worth living.
They are so mysterious and courageous and vulnerable and beautiful and so utterly incomprehensible.
But I totally understand them. Well, I do now, now that I am more modest.
I can only take the THEMs, the YOUs in small doses. They confuse and contradict me. The cheek of it all. But it is a drug that I want more of. The more I dare, the bigger the reward, the more of ME I see in THEM and the more utter strangeness I encounter. I understand the extent of my confusion.
That connection. I love it. I fear it. It's risk and reward. It's dopamine. I need it. Badly.
Thankfully, reluctantly I am acknowledging that. I must try harder.
The Chink
Trying harder is hard, but not quite as hard as I make it out to be. I am a bit of a drama queen, a bit hyperbolic. I see in rainbows.
I loved the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k, it communicated on my level. Perfect pitch. But the chapter banging on about You Are Not Special. That made me squirm.
Everything in that book is spot on, except, that one chapter.
Heaven's sake, I am, I am special, my mum agreed, no doubt about it. That was one "truth" I was never going to swallow.
Except I have.
Evidence doesn't persuade, not normally. But when you are drowning in the stuff, even I, with my concentric defences against reality, my magnificent creation, I finally get to see a chink, and soon the light floods in.
Because here's what happened. Everyone I talk to has the dread. Every single one. They've worked it out, done their sums, rehearsed all the arguments in their own specific context. And then they say the things to me, the things that only "special me" knows.
They know what I know. And then some.
That insight, it should be the triple dread; it should have brought me to my knees. But it didn't. It brought me closer. Closer to THEM.
That's what I have been looking for all along. That connection. The thing I didn't bother looking for because I never knew it existed or thought it already did.
The thing I thought, only I felt, turns out to be the thing that everyone feels.
And now that the connection is made, everything seems so simple.
Probably? Possibly. There is the hope, the hope that keeps me going. A New Hope. Star Wars IV. The best one.
That's a blessing. It says keep going despite all the doubts.
The Awakening
That's good, that makes me happy. I have connected with my fellow humans. It only took me 60 years. I have a nice warm glow. Somewhere.
But hang on. The dread is still there.
Do something! Ah yes, I recall. The hard bit. Panic!
What would a mildly eccentric person want to do? That's easy, pretty much what they did yesterday, but maybe, just a little bit better. Tinker at the margins.
So here it is my flash of genius, we keep on keeping on. We connect, we encourage hope and we crack on.
It's just like the Wizard of Oz. The Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man already had the knowhow, the skills, they already instinctively knew what was right, what needed to be done. They just needed a medal from a charlatan.
Me, I was born for that role. Me and the rest of humanity.
Let's just do it. Beat the quiet dread, by being even more quiet.
Crack on and hand out the medals. Shhh!
Do you get the quiet feeling of dread?
Life is slipping away, so precious, and there is something sinister approaching.
I do.
The rational thing to do is pretend. Pretend you don't care, pretend it's not real. I think that's what most balanced, sensible people do.
Not all of them. Some have seen the light; they get more comfort in doing things. These people are awesome, they are hugging trees, saving whales, battling the odds against the well-funded, well-disciplined faceless corporations and bureaucracies.
The irony is that these enemies are full of people just like me, quieting their dread because they have mortgages, school fees, holidays, gambling debts to pay. Or more starkly because they need to feed themselves and their starving children. I would do the same. Maybe?
I sort of hate them, it's hard not to; they are the enemy. It says so in the Guardian, on Fox News.
But wait a minute, that means; I am the enemy. It's all a bit messy.
When everything is going to shit, you tell yourself don't worry. That you're too insignificant.
It's someone else's problem, someone with more sense, someone with more power and heaps more money.
That way you can shout at the stupid bastards when they come on the telly.
Death is good.
It's taken me far too long to realise this. I think getting old helps. It helps a lot. It's given me that little jolt of electricity, right in the coccyx.
The cold hard truth says that I'm old and useless (in the eyes of our culture), but I am mild, I am very uncertain, and I am fed up with the dread. I want to fix it, now this very moment.
This is a good thing!
But I don't want to change my life. Living is the only thing I'm half good at and I am not about to reinvent myself for some pipe dream.
I gonna, just do something and keep on doing something and see if all the other people fed up with the dread join in. Within their boundaries, their life, doing it with their people, in their own way.
The Double Dread
Now this business of cooperating with other people, building communities. That's the worst bit, the double dread.
I'm a bit, a bit mildly eccentric. I think that's correct, and if you disagree then that's your right.
Well people like me, by which I mean specifically me. We have a big problem with this. People don't understand me (I think), well not in the way I'd like them to.
It hurts.
I have spent pretty much my entire life subconsciously devising ways to avoid this double dread. I am devilishly good at it. My reality distortion field is a magnificent construction, a shield for my insecurity.
It protects me from the weird and dangerous things, the so, so dangerous things called THEM. I mean YOU the reader, another human wot-sit. And all the other people in the world.
The very ones I want to save.
The very ones, I suspect, that make life worth living.
They are so mysterious and courageous and vulnerable and beautiful and so utterly incomprehensible.
But I totally understand them. Well, I do now, now that I am more modest.
I can only take the THEMs, the YOUs in small doses. They confuse and contradict me. The cheek of it all. But it is a drug that I want more of. The more I dare, the bigger the reward, the more of ME I see in THEM and the more utter strangeness I encounter. I understand the extent of my confusion.
That connection. I love it. I fear it. It's risk and reward. It's dopamine. I need it. Badly.
Thankfully, reluctantly I am acknowledging that. I must try harder.
The Chink
Trying harder is hard, but not quite as hard as I make it out to be. I am a bit of a drama queen, a bit hyperbolic. I see in rainbows.
I loved the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k, it communicated on my level. Perfect pitch. But the chapter banging on about You Are Not Special. That made me squirm.
Everything in that book is spot on, except, that one chapter.
Heaven's sake, I am, I am special, my mum agreed, no doubt about it. That was one "truth" I was never going to swallow.
Except I have.
Evidence doesn't persuade, not normally. But when you are drowning in the stuff, even I, with my concentric defences against reality, my magnificent creation, I finally get to see a chink, and soon the light floods in.
Because here's what happened. Everyone I talk to has the dread. Every single one. They've worked it out, done their sums, rehearsed all the arguments in their own specific context. And then they say the things to me, the things that only "special me" knows.
They know what I know. And then some.
That insight, it should be the triple dread; it should have brought me to my knees. But it didn't. It brought me closer. Closer to THEM.
That's what I have been looking for all along. That connection. The thing I didn't bother looking for because I never knew it existed or thought it already did.
The thing I thought, only I felt, turns out to be the thing that everyone feels.
And now that the connection is made, everything seems so simple.
Probably? Possibly. There is the hope, the hope that keeps me going. A New Hope. Star Wars IV. The best one.
That's a blessing. It says keep going despite all the doubts.
The Awakening
That's good, that makes me happy. I have connected with my fellow humans. It only took me 60 years. I have a nice warm glow. Somewhere.
But hang on. The dread is still there.
Do something! Ah yes, I recall. The hard bit. Panic!
What would a mildly eccentric person want to do? That's easy, pretty much what they did yesterday, but maybe, just a little bit better. Tinker at the margins.
So here it is my flash of genius, we keep on keeping on. We connect, we encourage hope and we crack on.
It's just like the Wizard of Oz. The Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man already had the knowhow, the skills, they already instinctively knew what was right, what needed to be done. They just needed a medal from a charlatan.
Me, I was born for that role. Me and the rest of humanity.
Let's just do it. Beat the quiet dread, by being even more quiet.
Crack on and hand out the medals. Shhh!
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