Friends, get out! Get outside your room, outside your apartment, outside your house, and even outside yourself! The temple of the day awaits beyond your familiar walls!
If you read the news or scroll through your social media feeds, you'll see it said that we're currently living through an anxiety pandemic. The market economy has responded by providing all manner of pills as a cure. But I wonder, to what extent is anxiety an indoor phenomenon? My sense is that a good deal of modern anxiety, especially in comfortable, developed nations, comes from feeling stuck--stuck inside of ourselves, or in some phase of life that we yearn to move past, or simply in a physical place that promises to hide us for a slow, scrolling day. Friends, even the best shelter is little more than a prison on beautiful days. So get out!
Friends, don't get me wrong, I don't mean to question the art of medicine. However, I do vehemently preach against the cult of overmedication! Do you realize that alcoholism is a form of overmedication? That getting so high that you miss an entire day passing by is a form of overmedication? Taking pills you don't need is no different! How often what's called medication today is actually overmedication! Have more faith in your body, friends, and less faith in multinational pharmaceutical corporations. Get out…from under their thumb!
A simple walk around your block won't ultimately start a life that feels stalled, but it does put you in a much better position to contemplate the path to more meaningful motion than just scrolling or sulking inside. I'm not advocating for you to spend your entire lifetime walking in circles, but you do have to be willing to walk a few circles to gather the momentum needed to escape whatever entropic, malevolent force has captured you. Beware, because what's draining your energy probably also contains a garbage disposal!
When I say outside, I do not always mean technically outside. 'Outside' can be an idea. It can mean removing yourself from a location where you feel too comfortable staying inside of yourself. It can be sitting down to write (or maybe just people-watch) at a familiar local cafe and feeling your soul relating to your body differently. It can be finding a bench and looking out on a river, beyond which all past and future anxiety seems to have momentarily lost its bridge. When I give directions, I tend to be open-ended. What's important is to get out!
And this isn't to say that meditative bench sitting (for example) is a fail-safe cure-all for anxiety induced by a hectic workday, family responsibilities, a big impending decision, or real-life tragedy. But I am saying that when we are struggling with depression or anxiety with no appreciable or immediate cause, a good first treatment is to go outside. Friends, if you have not yet gone out, the day has dawned only in theory for you! And despite many convoluted arguments to the contrary, nothing that is only 'in theory' truly has the capacity to move us!
Friends, get out!