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My Age Of Anxiety
Fear, Hope, Dread and the Search for Peace of Mind Scott Stossel William Heinemann 2014 When it was first published in 1947, The Age of Anxiety, W. H. Auden's last, longest, and most ambitious book-length poem immediately struck a powerful chord, capturing the imagination of the cultural moment that it diagnosed and named. Beginning as a conversation among four strangers in a barroom in New York, Auden's analysis of Western culture during the Second World War won the Pulitzer Prize and inspired a symphony by Leonard Bernstein as well as a ballet by Jerome Robbins. As one of his editors, Alan Jacobs, put it, the work is “extraordinarily famous for a book so little read; or, extraordinarily little read for a book so famous”. The themes and ideas in Auden's "The Age of Anxiety" reflect his belief that man's quest for self-actualization is in vain. Perhaps his message was that when people cease to contend with the real problems in the real world, they become disengaged from the world around them. When I went through it, these lines caught my attention as they outline the world to come with such prescience; "Odourless ages, an ordered world / Of planned pleasures and passport-control, / Sentry-go sedatives, soft drinks and / Managed money, a moral planet / Tamed by terror . . ." Many tomes have been written on anxiety since then. My personal favourite is Rollo May’s Meaning Of Anxiety which was based on his doctoral dissertation. He perceives that anxiety to be “the apprehension cued off by a threat to some value which the individual holds essential to his existence as a self”. Of course there have been scores of other definitions which have drawn attention to various facets and determinants of anxiety’ From a sufferer’s perspective, anxiety is always and absolutely personal. It is an experience: coloration in the way one thinks, feels and acts. When a person who is afflicted with anxiety writes about it there is a deep resonance in the narrative, which sadly is missing from professional and academic tomes. It is in this light that I found the recent book My Age Of Anxiety by Scott Stossel, an interesting read. Scott the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, provides a fascinating insight into the condition. Drawing on his own long-standing battle with anxiety, he presents an astonishing history, at once intimate and authoritative, of the efforts to understand the condition from medical, cultural, philosophical, and experiential perspectives. His account ranges from the earliest medical reports of Galen and Hippocrates, through later observations by Robert Burton and Søren Kierkegaard, to the investigations by great nineteenth-century scientists, such as Charles Darwin, William James, and Sigmund Freud, as they began to explore its sources and causes, to the latest research by neuroscientists and geneticists. Scott also reports on famous individuals who struggled with anxiety, as well as on the afflicted generations of his own family. His portrait of anxiety reveals not only the emotion's myriad manifestations and the anguish anxiety produces but also the countless psychotherapies, medications, and other (often outlandish) treatments that have been developed to counteract it. He evocatively depicts anxiety's human toll - its crippling impact, it’s devastating power to paralyze - while at the same time exploring how those who suffer from it find ways to manage and control it. My Age of Anxiety is learned and empathetic, humorous and inspirational, offering the reader great insight into the biological, cultural, and environmental factors that contribute to the affliction. Scott’s ability to unabashedly share his experiences creates a strong sense of humanity in his book, and his first-person narrative is very effective in de-stigmatizing neurotic fear. He gracefully guides us across the terrain of an affliction that is pervasive yet too often misunderstood. My Age Of Anxiety does for anxiety what Andrew Solomon did for depression in the Noonday Demon: an Atlas of Depression, by weaving personal memoir together with a flotilla of fact and historical research. After reading it, I am tempted to gather together poems on anxiety in Indian languages. For example Bharathiyar in a poem called Velvi Pattu, talks about fears and worries as demons which bring suffering to humanity. They enter into the mind, exert control and destroy lives. They immerse human beings in darkness and prevent them from attaining the light of wisdom. If you come across any literary works, especially poems which deal with anxiety, do pass them on if you have come across some! And I am also curious to know whether fear and anxiety are distinguished as being separate in Indian languages…
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A short story is, in some ways, like a photograph... a captured moment of time that is crystalline, delicate and sometimes mysterious. An outstanding exponent of it I feel, is Lydia Davis, who is often called, the shortest of all short story writers. Her stories can even be as brief as a single sentence! In her work she redefines the meaning of brevity and her ending are often breath-taking. She has no use for overwrought language or verbal trickery. The minimal narrative structure she employs forces us to reconsider the meaning of both ‘short’ and ‘story’. As she herself comments, 'I guess what I have often written is a prose poem, or a meditation'. Her stories are snapshots of the human condition and of its delicate nature.
Here is an example... A STORY TOLD TO ME BY A FRIEND A friend of mine told me a sad story the other day about a neighbour of hers. He had begun a correspondence with a stranger through an online dating service. The friend lived hundreds of miles away, in North Carolina. The two men exchanged messages and then photos and were soon having long conversations, at first in writing and then by phone. They found that they had many interests in common, were emotion-ally and intellectually compatible, were comfortable with each other and were physically attracted to each other, as far as they could tell on the Internet. Their professional interests, too, were close, my friend’s neighbour being an account-ant and his new friend down south an assistant professor of economics at a small college. After some months, they seemed to be well and truly in love, and my friend’s neighbour was convinced that ‘this was it’, as he put it. When some vacation time came up, he arranged to fly down south for a few days and meet his Internet love. During the day of travel, he called his friend two or three times and they talked. Then he was surprised to receive no answer. Nor was his friend at the airport to meet him. After waiting there and calling several more times, my friend’s neighbour left the airport and went to the address his friend had given him. No one answered when he knocked and rang. Every possibility went through his mind. Here, some parts of the story are missing, but my friend told me that what her neighbour learned was that, on that very day, even as he was on his way south, his Internet friend had died of a heart attack while on the phone with his doctor; my friend’s neighbour, having learned this either from the man’s neighbour or from the police, had made his way to the local morgue; he had been allowed to view his Internet friend; and so it was here, face to face with a dead man, that he first laid eyes on the one who, he had been convinced, was to have been his companion for life. Whenever I see the scarlet minivet, it sets my heart aflutter.
A colorful sprightly little bird, the plumage color in male gives the impression that the birds is on flame. Females are paler and yellowish. They lure us with their beckoning flight. Such moments are trysts with the infinite.. The darting minivet Clothed in Charcoal and flame Flying unaware Of its own shining Flashing fire With its wings… Glimpses At: http://flickr.com/gp/24876955@N02/z9160X/ |
Dr Raguram
Someone who keeps exploring beyond the boundaries of everyday life to savor and share those unforgettable moments.... Archives
May 2024
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