Hyperopia

November 4th, 2006

I had written a journal about the severe anxiety I had been having, and an incident at Meijer that was the turning point of it-

"...As I'm going to pay with my purse of change I scrounged up, the guy behind me is right there. I can feel his breath in my hair, he is that close. I'm all ready a nervous wreck as it is and I'm shaking as I put money in the machine because this man is watching me...every move I make, and he's making me frightningly anxious. By now you think this is all in my head, I'm out of my mind. I'm reading into things way to much. I'm creating problems that aren't there. But no. Because as I'm still shaking and struggling to put my money in the slot with the guy lurking over me, he whispers to me, "We are all fighting for our lives." I paused for a second and looked back at him. He was staring blankly at the magazine rack but was looking right through them. The he looked up at me and said it again, "We are all fighting for our lives"....
All night I've been hearing that guys voice saying, "We are fighting for our lives," and this is true. But why?"

I ended that journal with, "We are digging our own graves."

I think of everyday as a struggle, a battle for ourselves. Everyday I have to prove to myself and the world that I am who I am. I re-read this journal from a little over a year ago because I had been feeling that way again lately. For the past few weeks I've felt like everything has been a constant fight. It's tiring. After that fit of anxiety last year I had become very peaceful. Now in the midst of all my discontent I hear that guy whispering, "We are all fighting for our lives," and it calms me down. It calms me because its true, and because once I acknowledge that, I can make a choice. I don't have to fight.

There was a long stretch of time last year when I remained unspoken. I chose to be an observer than a participant. It did me a lot of justice. I remained indifferent to the events happening around me. Though indifference has a negative connotation, it wasn't the apathy I've been feeling lately. In fact, I was far more empathetic then than I am now. I'm only apathetic now because the events are effecting me. Back then, I had distanced myself, and was able to see what was happening clearly, and it was easy to be sympatheic. There is a line from the Tao I've always loved and always have tried to keep in mind, "The sound traveller stays two steps back and remains awake to all that is possible." At some point around the end of this past summer that mind frame has begun to slip away from me. I had started to feel anxious again, nervous tendencies began to return, and I found myself losing grip on my emotions. I've tried to bury it but it has become overwhelming. Someone led me to believe that my perspective was wrong, and eventually I had begun to believe them.

Now I see, that it was them who was wrong. Constant anxiety is no way to live. I have a right to believe this, I've lived with anxiety for my entire life. The only point in my life when I've ever felt any peace is when I've distanced myself. These past few weeks I've been trying to reclaim that mindframe. I've found that the problem lies in the lack of distance. We all enjoy being close to one another, we all enjoy the intamcy of it, we all enjoy being involved. The title of this journal is a name for an eye condition. Hyperopia is farsightedness, the ability to see far, but the inability to focus on the things right in front of you. When we get caught up in people, situations, events, and ideas we begin to lose focus. Our perspective begins to become blurred. This is exactly what causes me anxiety.

There is something about Western culture that is very indulgent, dramatic, and decadent. We long to feel closer to people. We spend years in therapy because our parents, our husbands and wives, our friends, and even ourselves, did not love us enough. But you know what? Irrelvant. Love does not matter nearly as much as we think that it does. Empathy matters, humanity matters, we should feel as we are all one. But attachment? Attachment is not the answer. When studying some Eastern religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism, I belive it was the Hindus that had such a seemingly complex attitude towards the self and the Self. They see it as two seperate entities, the worldly self, and the eternal Self. I agree with this. However, I think that the problem with western culture, and particularly any culture in general really, is that the worldly self seems to be the closest to us. We chose indulgences because they satisfy the sensory needs. We choose aesthetics, to touch, hear, feel, smell, taste, love and hate. We chose to do this because we think that it is all that there is. There is another quote from the Tao, "When there is no desire, all things are at peace." Ha, no desire. What do we know about no desire? We spend our entire lives wanting. This believe that the elimination of desire brings peace, stems from a Buddhist view, and that is that to desire means to suffer. And the only way to attain peace is to eliminate suffering. Again, in Hinduism I had learned that this elimination of desire means the elimination of attachment. This includes to people, to family, children, husbands and wives, and even the worldly self. I found this concept to be the most strange. We are to raise our children and then let them live. We can love each other but must not become dependent, we must let them live. This seems so unfathomable in my culture. But I believe it to be true. The closer we get to others, the closer we get to dramatics, the more out of focus we become.

It's the people who forget to close the doors of perception and be content within themselves in the world that lose focus. It is these people who live like this everyday who are digging their own graves.

We are all fighting for our lives. Focus has nothing to do with vision, it has to do with internal perspective, and I'm fighting to reclaim that focus. I'm fighting to reclaim a peaceful existence.