I’m walking on a country path with a forest on my right and train tracks on my left. I wasn’t sure it would be a good idea to go for a walk since it’s early August, but it’s not that warm at the moment. There’s a bit of wind, so being outside is bearable. It’s going to be different by the end of the week and next week, when temperatures are going to soar again. Worried about the weather, I thought I’d take this opportunity.
But as I’m walking here, trying to relax, thoughts enter my head that I feel are true, yet annoying. Thoughts that are difficult to accept but nonetheless true.
I feel that life—my life at least—primarily consists of stress. Stress about a lot of things. Sequential moments of stress. Simultaneous moments of stress. Whether it’s about health, money, career, giving meaning to life, loneliness, etc. And of course all these stresses correlate, are to be divided into separate, smaller, more concrete problems and sources of worry.
For instance, when you are finally done with education—obligatory education, as in high school, or self-elected obligatory education like university—you have a set, fixed number of things to worry about. But then responsible adult life begins and suddenly you are thrown into a world that expects you to live a full and meaningful life, work, have a career, make money. Let’s just pause there and look at that for a second.
To be able to work to make enough money to support yourself, you need to be in a geographical area that will support enough workers for a sustainable wage. But just to be able to live in such an area, you need to have money because it is very expensive to live in an area like that. That’s a conundrum.
And it’s not just one paradox. Let’s say you’ve managed to find a job and through successive years of toil you’ve been able to climb up the ladder and get a decent wage. Then suddenly there’s a reorganization and you’re out. Seventeen years of building a sustainable wage, suddenly over. Now you’ll have to find another job or start your own business. But in the meantime you’ve aged and your health is beginning to give you problems.
So you decide to commit yourself to improving your health. Improving your health is a very labor-intensive, all-consuming prospect, which means that you are worrying most of the time about doing the right thing. Stressing about how to fit in the right things to do for your health with your normal life, how to be able to provide for yourself while you’re focusing on your health. And you still want to grow. There are still steps to take in your career. Perhaps even take an actual holiday once in a while. You haven’t had a holiday in seven or eight years, which is sort of concerning. So you start to worry about that.
Finally, you decide to reward yourself with a holiday despite all the focus on health, career and money issues. Soon you notice—not for the first time but more acutely now because you’re confronted with it so blatantly—that the whole world has turned into a hyper-capitalist nightmare designed to suck everything from consumers.
That’s okay, you’re smart. But it means you’re wary constantly, which means you’re stressing about things. Trying to find the hotel room—lots of horror stories in the reviews, what should I do, which should I pick? How to get to your holiday destination? Say you’re going to drive because it’s convenient and there are things you want to bring along. But then the car starts exhibiting problems three weeks before you leave on holiday. Well, that’ll mess up your holiday pre-fun. More stress.
Then suddenly your health worsens. You don’t know exactly what it is. You’re talking to AI about it because that’s what we do now, and AI says, “Well, I can’t give you medical advice, but you might want to have that looked at. You might need surgery. You don’t want to let that get worse.”
You drive to a nearby forest, in hopes of soothing your mind, and in the forest, even though there are fewer things to stress about, you realize that instead of feeling serene and calm, you’re still dealing with Avoidant Personality Disorder and anxiety, because, oh right, those are your steady companions, most likely born out of stress. You’re looking over your shoulder every two, three minutes to make sure there are no other people on the extremely secluded path you’ve chosen to walk on. You know it’s secluded because this is the path you always walk on.
The wind in the trees on the opposite side of the tracks is really esthetically appealing and almost mystic, yet it doesn’t really enter your mind. Because you’re focused on explanation, on legacy, stressing about the years left, the active years left in your life since you’re approaching the big 5-0. And it doesn’t seem like you’ve actually accomplished anything yet. Aside from managing to end your career at this age—the worst moment you could end your career. You know it’s not your fault and that it’s just a consequence of a change in worldview and direction within a large corporation. But still, you managed to get yourself in a situation where you no longer have a job in a couple of months.
Meanwhile, because you want to give meaning to life, you start stressing about—well, shouldn’t I actually be working on my next album? Because my last album got some critical acclaim, and should I not use that momentum? And so am I going to listen to candidates for the next album? Or am I going to use the expensive portable mic to record a soliloquy about the stressful nature of living?
So you do both. You listen to a couple of your newish tracks, but you feel restless, so you decide, well, now is a good opportunity—since it seems completely secluded here and I’m alone—now it seems time to talk to myself. Lending voice to thought, you’re a little bit worried that if somebody walking the same path were to go unnoticed and get close, since you’re deep in contemplation, it would be quite embarrassing for them to hear you talking to yourself.
Which reminds you of the story you had in your head for a long time, for which you made an outline. But because you made an outline that was so extensive, now it feels like a block to actually writing the thing. You start to worry about that. You think about methodology. Are my methods flawed? Am I sabotaging myself?
And all the while you’re walking along the railway tracks and beside the forest, and you can’t enjoy anything. You see the clouds, you like clouds, with the sun behind them, making dramatic outlines in the sky, but none of that beauty is even registering much.
Stressing about all of this stress, it makes you think of things that make you less stressed. Like reading, or listening nowadays, to a good book—because your eyes are for shit, which is worrisome, because you feel like it might be actually worse than the optometrist realized. And you’re thinking, well, what if my sight really becomes bad? How will I handle life then? And so that’s another domain: the hypothetical stressors. The ‘perhaps’. And the expected stressors. There are a lot of those. You decide not to think about things that don’t stress you out, because all of them seem to have trapdoors.
You realize that the path, the secluded path, is almost at its end, and you’ll have to turn right and go back into the more densely frequented areas of this recreational area. So you’ll have to finish your thoughts quickly now, wrap it up. You’re worried that you didn’t actually manage to articulate very well what you wanted to say. You realize that there’s no use in continuing, trying to get it right, because that is just another stress factor: perfectionism.
So as the end of the path looms and I’ve turned right and am in the last respite of solitude, I’m thinking about some poignant words to finish this train of thought, to construct a nice terminus for the train.
But there aren’t any. So what I’ll do is I’ll finish the recording. And I’ll put back in my earbuds for the rest of the walk to listen to candidates for my next album and try—most likely in vain—not to stress so much.