tossyturny

With all these years under my belt as a neurotic and anxious leaning person, I have discovered that words of comfort had never offered anything close to comfort. Instead, they tended to remind me of my predicament which only served to deepen the well that formed in the pit of my stomach.

Recently, I picked up skipping rope to introduce some cardio exercise into my life. There was no convenient place to jog near my house and I couldn’t let that be an excuse to not to run any further, so I decided to fool around with a jump rope. I figured that it would give me a good workout to the same effect. After all, what difference is running for a couple of miles from jumping on the spot for a couple of minutes? It’s exercise on the legs all the same.

Today, after finishing my session of jump rope, I noticed that I felt particularly refreshed. I took note of this sensation, and thought about all the times exercise was recommended as a remedy to anxiety. It really does work.

It got me thinking. Perhaps anxiety is not a mental disorder. Perhaps our bodies are built to face challenges from time to time. Perhaps our ancestors have adapted to face danger every so often, and that heightened state of tension that is felt after a seemingly peaceful period in life is our body’s way of reminding us that danger is always lurking around the corner and that we had to keep alert. Perhaps stress was never the sickness, perhaps it was the medicine that kept us focused on our purpose, to move life along.

In the modern world, without tigers lurking in the corners of our subconscious, our lifestyles have evolved, but our habits and instincts have remained the same. Modern anxiety is still helpful however. It reminds us of the uncertainty of our experiences. It reminds us that life is an adventure, and if we are feeling anxious, perhaps our great adventure has yet to come, and that we should get busy working to prepare for day that it does.

I guess the antidote to anxiety has always remained the same. In the past perhaps it was sharpening our tools and hardening our bodies in order to prepare ourselves against predatory beasts or conflict. Maybe that’s why exercise relieves us of our anxiety, as it tricks our body into thinking that we have done the necessary work. Today, we sharpen our minds and our skills to prepare ourselves to face the demands of the economy, to make ourselves useful to our loved ones and our community, to feel needed. The answer was in our face all along! All we had to do was work towards our calling, towards accomplishment and fulfilment.

And when that is said and done, if we still feel that lingering existential threat or sense of impending doom, we could always go for a quick jog or a couple of skips on the rope, and that should do the trick.