So you’re overwhelmed by the future.

Allow me to share a straight-from-life parable.

I like to run around Bennington Reservoir, out beyond the Community College. It’s beautiful hilly land, with little valleys and summits. There is a levy by the reservoir. There is a big hill at one end of the levy. It’s steep, and most importantly, it’s long; painfully, rage-inducingly long. Some of you who do your Cross Country training out at Bennington might be nodding with grim
recognition.

I have been running up this hill for years and it never gets easier. It wasn’t easy when I was 22 and it’s not easy now that I’m 30-[censored]. But one thing I have discovered over these many years is that I am much more likely to say “Ahh, f*ck it!!” and stop running before I reach the top IF I’m looking up ahead and focusing on how much farther I have to go. On the other hand, by keeping my head down and focusing on absolutely nothing except the ground beneath me and the next step..the next step..the next step…I eventually find myself at the top.

I am ugly and sweaty, but I am victorious.

Many of you have found success and gotten where you are by always looking up and ahead. You have been vigilant, restless, warily anticipating the next challenge. It’s a great strategy sometimes. But there are also times when trying to see too far ahead will only serve to cripple you with dread and terror. Either because there’s more than you are capable of dealing with all at once and you are daunted and want to give up, or because you can’t actually see what’s ahead, so your brain goes bananas in the face of the unknown and begins to rumble and fantasize and spin out stories, desperate for anything other than uncertainty.

The truth is, no amount of thinking is going to magically reveal the future, because the future doesn’t exist – it’s the big, horrible, forever-emerging unknown that our brains just hate. Your brain would rather torture you than face the unknown. It will create (usually worst-case) scenarios, or grope back into what it knows of your past and use this limited information to try to predict the future. Notice the scenes and stories your mind offers – it’s good info about your past – but don’t use it as your crystal ball.

There is a place for the internal work of thinking and feeling. But at a certain point this can become a phantasmagorical mind-world that has little to do with the larger world outside of ourselves. There is great power and relief in lacing up your shoes and hitting the dirt, grappling with a real challenge in front of you right here, right now. Remember, anxiety is fear without an object to attach itself to. Find the object of your fear and do something concrete about it. If there is no object, no specific thing that you can take some action to alleviate, then you might just be living in a self-made anxiety fever dream.

If you need support or just a reality check, counselors at the Welty Center are standing by. You don’t even need an appointment – just walk in Monday-Friday at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Hang tough, Whitties, and in the immortal words of Nike – just do it.