Anxiety and depression are common maladies these days, which
is not surprising, given what it's like to live in the contemporary world.
Perceptive, sensible, and sensitive people find it difficult to block out the
awareness that we live in an uneasy present and face a perilous future. Some of
us might be able to retreat into our respective cocoons. We might pursue resource-intensive
diversions and max out our landfills with yesterday’s must-have consumer items,
but in the end, not only is avoidance not the solution; it exacerbates the
problem.
Our lives are not defined by baseline functionality. There’s
more to being alive than breathing, meeting obligations, drawing a paycheck,
and not dying, and there is more to enjoying life than avoiding unpleasantness
and discomfort.
Avoidance is an obstacle to personal as well as collective
wellbeing. Some of what is most biologically vital, psychologically compelling,
and emotionally enriching in us goes to sleep. When we attempt to block out
what we find to be unpleasant, we lose the ability to experience joy, delight,
sublime beauty, and love. Life without a deeply humanizing dimension is flat.
We all crave deeper satisfactions. We can no more go without emotional sustenance than we
can go without food. A not insignificant percentage of infants deprived of
physical affection literally die of neglect. Children who are not nurtured miss
out on crucial developmental thresholds and suffer permanent deficits, sometimes even to the point of acquiring
personality disorders.
Being resigned to just accepting what feels unacceptable
leads to learned helplessness.
Participating in solutions to social problems, by creating experiences of
efficacy,
contributes to a sense of empowerment and personal wellbeing.
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