Good morning from Sequim! This morning I am thinking about Canada geese and anxiety, an intimately familiar state to me. I awakened to the cacophonous sound of flocks of seagulls, herons, and Canada geese rejoicing in the first negative tide in over a week. They squabbled over breakfast and territory. It could not be described as peaceful or, from the birds’ perspectives, free from anxiety. And yet, there was so much life in the conflict! I was drawn to the geese flying overhead, those behind shouting encouragement to those in front, an occasional straggler slipping into the V-shaped formation. Some of the flocks had neat, orderly lines and seemed intent on creating a beautiful structure. Other flocks were less perfect. Their lines were wobbly and undulating, always in danger of making an unorthodox shape. They honked more enthusiastically, perhaps trying to whip others into shape. They seemed happier if that is an assessment I can make from my human perspective.
My observations led me to steal some of my carefully scheduled dissertation writing time to look up facts on Canada geese. Were the flying formations family groups? Yes, mostly. Do they mate for life? Yes, and they have a very low divorce rate! I also learned that they are loyal–a mate will stay with their injured partner even if the rest of the flock moves on. They mourn those who are lost to the flock. The stronger birds take the lead, and the others draft in formation. They take turns leading, as leadership comes at the cost of greater energy expenditure. Occasionally, a goose will become separated from the flock and has no guarantee of acceptance in another. I observed the frantic calls of a solitary goose as he sought out his flock and flew rapidly in search of his family.
I don’t imagine that the life of a goose is free from anxiety or emotion. How can it be? Their survival depends on staying together while they navigate currents and predators and fear of being lost. However, what was interesting to me was their ability to work together, remain loyal, share leadership, and maybe even find meaning (if that is something birds are wont to do) in their shared experience. Their instincts bind them together and ensure the survival of their species. Can you even imagine what would happen if suddenly individual birds decided to rid themselves of their angst, trip out on a special mushroom they found in a wetland swamp, and go it alone?
Treating anxiety has become a multi-billion dollar industry. We likely all have it in some form or another and look for ways to keep it from framing our lives. We buy fidget spinners, download meditation apps, seek therapists and cognitive behavioral therapy, and take psychoactive medications that fundamentally change our brain chemistry. For some, religion provides solace as they gather into groups of like-minded individuals that offer the certainty of their doctrinal beliefs to insulate against the anxiety of uncertainty. If we don’t have insurance or financial resources or membership in a church to mitigate our angst in productive ways, there are varieties of recreational drugs, excessive exercise, or the time-honored and socially-sanctioned ritual of drinking alcohol until our discomfort is numbed into oblivion. These coping strategies serve a purpose and have in common an effort to avoid a universal feeling that likely is responsible for the evolution of the human species.
Let me explain. Think for a moment how anxiety has served us? Would we have survived as solitary individuals? Is that even possible? We all began as members of a family, with father and mother and siblings. Anxiety was useful for gathering into clans for safety and sharing of food production. The anxiety about food uncertainty kept us fed, taught us to plant crops when meat sources were scarce. Anxiety about personal safety taught us our enemies and led us to form governing structures within our clans that ensured our children learned necessary survival skills. Anxiety was the impetus (at least according to C. G. Jung) that led to the formation of religious rituals to provide a safe container that insulated us against becoming overwhelmed by the fear that a direct encounter with the unconscious could engender by projecting the radical otherness of the objective psyche onto metaphysical deities. My point is that anxiety is both unavoidable and ultimately useful and productive. Maybe it’s time to rethink our relationship to this ubiquitous feeling.
What would happen if we could reframe anxiety as energy and excitement and evidence that transformation or, in Christian terms, redemption is taking place within our souls and by extension in the societies we are mutually creating? It occurs to me that anxiety is the price of being human, of suffering the tension of opposites within our souls. Yes, it can be crippling, debilitating. It’s damn uncomfortable to be so wound up that action becomes impossible, and we become catatonic in the face of the fundamental energy that drives transformation in our individual lives. Jung talks about this as a veritable crucifixion, this suffering disparate parts of ourselves trying to claim their space within as necessary, even desirable attributes that do not fit into what our ego thinks makes up an ideal socially acceptable personality.
Anxiety is also the tension between epochs–the inevitable result of dealing with a global pandemic, the dissolution of our society’s foundation structures–changing definitions of family and tribe, migrating populations, increasingly polarized political views, or inequity in resources and education. We are in a time where the gods we have relied upon are changing rapidly. The old gods are in their death knells, their gasps reverberating across cultures that try to alleviate their collective anxiety by insisting their gods are the only true ones and resisting inevitable change. Violence is preferable to uncertainty–if I can subdue my enemies (the others onto whom I have projected what I cannot love), I don’t have to recognize my crippling fear of being alone with the unincorporated and primitive instinctual aspects of my interiority.
All of our individual efforts to deal with uncertainty may not be in our best interests. If anxiety persists as an emotion to overcome through personal effort, then we are left alone, drink in hand, journaling, drugging, logging miles to outrun it, or doubling down on existing belief systems that promise certainty. It becomes my therapist and me and my coping mechanism of choice, whether benign or destructive, me alone with the unresolved tension in my soul. We do not thrive in solitude. We were born into and flourished in the community. This brings me back to the Canada geese and what we can learn from them.
From my perspective, geese don’t try to alleviate anxiety. They share it. The strong lead when capable and fall back in the classic V-formation characteristic of their species when tired, drafting upon the strength of those in front, renewing themselves in the process. They are loyal to each other, mourn their losses, and then move on. Those flying in the back still have a place. Geese seem to value the structure of their formations but realize that its continuation relies upon shared and changing leadership. Their community seems to accept anxiety as a given that is a burden lightened through shared experience. I, for one, have taken note.
We have what other species may not have, the ability to reflect on our experience. This should give us an advantage, but does it? What would change if we invited our collective anxiety to a communal table, not as a project to be fixed but a valued friend whose task it is to protect us and move us to a more advanced consciousness by pointing out what needs to be accepted as the privilege of being human?