Demons

Emotions are such fickle friends. With all my trying to be a good Buddhist, or a good Christian or a conscious person, equanimity continues to elude me. I can hold my shit together for only so long and then some little demons come and get through.

My friend Joanne used to talk about the leaving the house demons. She would get her family and their stuff all organized for a trip and just as they were walking out the door, someone would spill something on themselves and require a change of clothes. Or someone would fall and cut themselves. Or the car wouldn't start and suddenly everyone was in a bad mood, if not totally freaking out.

Another friend has the "I'm not good enough" demons. No amount of logic can stop her from having these sink holes of lack of confidence every once in a while. She was the person I couldn't stand in college when she always came out of an exam saying she was sure she had flunked and then turning up with an 'A'. Hated that.

Then there are the "I can't cope" demons. If you ever want to go for a bad ride, let these come through the door. All your energy leaves you and you can't cope, thereby giving more power to the little monsters.

Don't forget the "I'll never be able to sleep" ones. Self-evident.

I have the "what if" set backs. I mean, these have unlimited potential for joy kill. Once, in 1969, after my first child was born and I had a lot of time doing not much of anything in Drain, Oregon, I started a little book, which was actually a list. I called it "Live in Fear". It was a "what if" list. You can't imagine the possibilities:

What if the roof leaks in the baby's room?
What if I break my leg and the phone doesn't work?
What if we have no water?
What if I run out of gas?
What if I go blind?
What if this headache is a brain tumor?
What if I fall asleep and forget the baby?

I added to my list daily with a kind of superstitious hope that if I could name all my fears, I could ward them off. It didn't work like that. I kind of freaked myself out and had to give up after many many pages. The book would have been a distinct bummer in any case.

I think these thoughts are all the same. They are very powerful. They can cause anxiety attacks, health problems, and great discomfort.

Victor Frankle in his brilliant book Man's Search for Meaning, offers a way to rid these thoughts of their power. He uses the example of stage fright. He suggests that before you give a speech, if you are stricken, that you picture the absurdly, absolutely worst things that can happen to humiliate yourself during the talk. If you can go all the way in your imagination, your picture of yourself becomes comic and you start to smile. Fear and humor can't share the same space, just as fear and love can't.

Or, I suppose, you can take an Ativan. But that turns out to be a short temporary fix.