Feb 2011
Does anyone remember
the child’s game of fiddlesticks? You held in your hand a collection of
different coloured sticks (mine were plastic), let them go, and then chose one
to lift out of the small piece of chaos each stick until all were removed from
the pile. If I remember correctly, you chose all sticks of the same colour,
until these were removed. There might also have been a component of the game
where each colour was worth more or fewer points than the others. It was a game
of skill.
I have clients who
come in to see me, overwhelmed with choices: where to go now, which course to
take, how to quell an all embracing anxiety about the multiplicity of things. They’d reached a point of stuckness; a
sense that no choice is possible among the many choices. At the heart of this
is a knowing that there many many possibilities, an excitement that beckons,
but a tremendous anxiety usually concerning the “rightness” of a decision about
to be made.
Like a game of
fiddlesticks you can fiddle around putting off making a decision, or you can
deliberately pick up a stick and lever off each stick one at a time
methodically, noting as you do, what is more important to you, and what can be
cleared away without too much thought. It is usually no more complicated than
this. A life is a long time (though, of course, how long, few actually know).
In a life it is possible (and happens practically always) to take many “wrong”
turns before you realize what it is that really matters to you and what it is
that you decide to devote the rest of your time to.
Anxiety in the face
of making a decision is a peculiar admixture of emotions. There is a surge of
excitement and a sense of confusion; there is sometimes gut pain, often
sweating, a tingling, a rootlessness, a feeling that your heart has dropped to
your feet, and an idea that you cannot make a move, because at the edge of it
all is a sense that you are near annihilation. Anxiety in bits and pieces is
quite normal and a part of life. It is when you feel anxious all the time and
when it gets in the way of doing what needs to be done that maybe a call to a
therapist is a good idea.
Anxiety is the “fear
and trembling” before a new encounter. It comes to the fore when we challenge
our old self-world relationship and doing things in the same old way. Feeling
anxious, though, when identified positively as an excitement rather than
negatively as a disorder, has the wonderful power of changing how we are in the
world, of allowing us to embrace life more fully.
Artists know well
anxiety and a sense of being in chaos. They choose to occupy the “anxious
space” for although feelings of insecurity, over sensitivity, and abandonment
come with the deal, as it were, they embrace the “divine madness” for the
extraordinary charge that comes with creation. Creation, as the Old Testament
book of Genesis in the Bible describes it, is a process of separating from
chaos (‘the earth was without form and void’), night and day, darkness and
light. This process, though, cannot be forced: it is necessary to listen to the
movements within. This does not mean that you wait until the spirit moves you,
but that you respond to the often inchoate “voices” within, and slowly or
swiftly as is required create by a process of separation, this from that, that
from this till what you have made excites you.
Anxiety is embraced
by artists and can be likewise an energetic source that others can draw upon in
the course of daily life.
If I take one course
of action, will I have to abandon all the others? Yes, but just for now.
The art and skill of
fiddlesticks is to attend fully to each stick as you lever it up and add it to
your pile of possibilities beside you. In sorting through the chaos an art of
life that excites you becomes clearer. Sometimes this is just plain and rather
dull old work; sometimes your heart soars with elation. Choosing is a skill
that can be learned and anxiety can be a useful tool in getting you started.
