One of my biggest sources of anxiety these days is over career and my future path. I know I can make do with a relatively simple job, and I’d avoid the extra stress of a profession. But a voice tells me I won’t be satisfied without something more; I set my sights on that, but have to contend with the anxiety arising from self-doubt and a lack of self confidence that’s always held me back. Perhaps I ought to revisit my own advice.
What do you mean here?
I dunno. My feeling is we have a habit of applying some sort of “misery filter” to everything before, say, the 20th century or maybe a bit earlier. Almost like how as I kid I couldn’t imagine being able to entertain myself in the world of a few decades prior, without my computer or video games. Like it’s hard to imagine living content in a world without the comforts we now have, but it’s all relative. A world without medicine, running water and central heating was all they knew. And in the absence of war, famine or pestilence I can imagine most people got by okay. On the other hand I also get the feeling the far greater complexity of our modern lives means we are overexposed to stress, whereas when most of your concerns for the typical day were tilling the fields or practicing your trade and interacting with a smaller number of people you were pretty familiar with, life would have been a lot simpler.
I saw this clip of a man from a tribe still living a primitive life, on one of India’s islands I think. And from the way he talked, and the genuineness of his smile I was thinking “You can’t tell me you could plonk this guy in a city, give him an apartment and a 9-5 job and he’d be happier”.
A few of the major draw backs of modern life are that we are exposed to so many more situations that can potentially give rise to anxiety, warranted or not. And we are exposed to things like the news and politics which are generally beyond our control as individuals, but tend to cause people to worry more than is deserved.
I’ve been learning recently how we can learn to deal with undue stress and tune out from the excess noise, but that seems to be an increasingly difficult task, particularly for people predisposed to it and who never learnt a healthier way of thought. I mean I think it’s not much more than a year ago that I came to the realisation it was possible to change, and I think there must be so many people who go about life taking all the stress and worry as a given.
But going back to my original theory: back in the medieval time in particular, where the prevailing attitude was the spiritual was just as much a reality - a part of life as the physical, and moreover the promise of salvation in the second life and all that entailed; this would have given people the ability to be content with their lot and cope with situations in which someone who was convinced or inclined towards the idea that what we see is all there is, that they would despair.
Not to say everything was dandy back then; like yeah, disease and premature death for example was far more prevalent. But my feeling is people were better able to cope with such things back then. And we’re yet to escape the human condition as of 2021.