There is a lot of noise these days, both in
the world and in our heads. Two types of noise I find specifically intolerable
are the constant bombardment of everyone else’s thoughts and ideas expressed
through social media, news, and messaging. And the other is simply what I hear
in my head.
If you have had any kind of anxiety
triggered by the Amygdala then you understand the physical tension that builds
in the body simply to prepare you to manage something bad get you through some “situation”.
The problem that I see these days is that trigger threshold has been lowered
and the fear to deal with something is now attached to everything, even the
benign. Has this happened because we live in such a dangerous and hard to
navigate world or has our perception of danger and fear changed?
The noise of the world could surely be ever
changing how we react for sure. I did not live through the bombings of Europe
in WW1 or the Great Depression so I do not know the reality of those experiences,
but we are bombarded with all the terrible events and tragedies in our current
time, like drinking from a firehose that cannot be tapped down. Sometimes I
want to be a little informed, but I come away from the media soaked and
battered by the stream when I only wanted a sip.
This can be the case for knowledge as well.
Just dipping my toe in the waters of a subject can quickly lead my squirrel mind
down so many paths that end up having nothing to do with my original interests.
Of course I am interested in so many things but I would prefer to become an
authority in a vocation or sport of interest. We live in a time with so many
new ideas and refinements and it’s all so accessible, it is like having 10
books open on the table but I can’t seem to finish even one.
Mix this this external noise with the
static of anxiety and the “always future concern” in my head, and it begins to
be very hard to know which one needs to be dealt with first just to make it
stop. And can it be stopped? Can you get the Genie back in the bottle? Does
this train have a brake?
Turning 50 this year I made a promise to
myself to be more deliberate when it comes to managing my health. I have spent
the last 2 years slowing down some genetic conditions and preventing the on-set
of some others. So why not act when it comes to my mental wellbeing? I don’t
want to use the term “mental health” and sound like I am jumping on what seems
to be a catch-all band wagon for everyone’s issues. But as Elon recently talked
about on the JRE show, we are living with a real “mind-virus” these days and
you could almost mistake it for a new actual condition.
So this is the program, to reduce and
remove the mind virus that seems to permeate our daily lives. And so not to
take the poorly performing “diet” route, it may have to be in the form of habit
and lifestyle. Making a habit of turning things off and tuning out the noise
while swapping the urgent with the important. How much easier could it be if I
exchanged screen time in the morning with Coffee and a book? Or simply sharing
more good times with friends and natural environments instead of watching Netflix
every night.
I have the grim feeling that if we don’t decide
and commit soon it is just going to be exponentially harder to make any headway
at all. It’s time for a revolution, a revolution of one. Start today, start
again tomorrow. It will build from there.
K~
