[excerpts] Hugh Prather on Anxiety

December 2011

"I am convinced that this anxiety running through my life is the tension between what I “should be” and what I am. My anxiety does not come from thinking about the future but from wanting to control it. It seems to begin whenever I smuggle an “I want to become” into my mind. It is the tension between my desire to control what I will be and the recognition that I can’t. “I will be what I will be” – where is the anxiety in that? Anxiety is the realization that I might not reach the rung on the opinion-ladder which I have just set for myself. I fear death most when I am about to exceed what others expect of me; then death threatens to cut me off from myself, because “myself” is not yet.

….Meaning does not exist in the future and neither do I. Nothing will even mean tomorrow what it did today. Meaning changes with the context. My meaningfulness is here. It is enough that I am of value to someone today. It is enough that I make a difference now."

*The excerpt above is from his wonderful book, Notes to Myself.