Steven in the Blind Trilogy 2/3

The Equanimity of Choice

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The coffee is hot this morning. I hazard a cup with the cows 2% contribution. I hold my breath so as not to corrupt the aroma with the mugs industrial odor. “Ahhhh, taste like the trail coffee on our Boy Scout expeditions.”  The breakfast tray of “mourning,” without the hard-boiled egg, looks like a second-grade science project. This is the kind of food that sustains you in the short-term but kills you in the long-term. Such is my present state, working in a peasants office performing the duties of a serf.

This is Steven in the Blind writing to you from a remote location in exile with both a resilient mind and a steely heart. Lest I seem boastful; I ask you to bear witness to my claims as you join me in today’s post. I am frothing for a challenging discourse.

In my experience anxiety thrives on the unknown. I have always imagined the unknown to be a void: dark, shapeless, absent of color, shadow, or dimension; and in this undefined abstraction, anxiety lurks; anxiety breeds. The only way I have ever known to chain or bind anxiety in the moment is to expose it, for it cannot be seen in the void. One must pierce the dark veil of the unknown to reveal and expose the beast of anxiety. My selected weapon is “choice,” but not merely choice as such could loose reckless folly – – no, it is the equanimity of choice; the reasoned resolve of indecisions betrayal with its pollination of fear.

Now you may protest (and I invite it!) “Stephen in the Blind, you are blind! It is but courage that conquers anxiety!” Let us speak of courage for it does not displace fear; it is contrary to fear. Courage is a prime mover to choice; the resolution of fear. Courage delivers resolution to the mind leveling its reason to choose. You may protest further (Bully for you!) “The ancient texts proclaim ‘perfect love cast out all fear!’” Do you believe this highly condensed statement to alone be the answer? Can we really know what “perfect” love is in comparison to all loves? I submit that love held perfectly (perhaps void of wild and irrational projections or narcissism) within ourselves, given by God, or another’s heart is also a prime mover of choice. It has been my experience that love gives me courage and courage produces a clarity of equilibrium, and this allows an equanimity of choice. That choice, I submit, is the weapon of wisdom.

Now to those whose anxiety is loosed upon future unhappenings, non-events, and imaginations yet to be imagined, the veil to penetrate is the moment of living. I have long practiced the discipline of living in the moment with my energy. In reference to my current circumstance, I spend very little energy beyond this moment. While my thoughts draft goals, tasks, and to-do’s for future positioning, my imagination stays resident here, with you. I could perish tomorrow yet, my imagination gives no quarter to the thought. It is the ambivalence of my own imagination upon my future that grounds my strength in the present. You see, even in my own mortality, I hold great impetus for my future, unshackled from any expectations.

It seems to be a common thought that we are experiencing more anxiety today than previous generations, but don’t you imagine every generation before us has thought so too? The good and the bad has always run on parallel tracks. History reveals this to be true. From the earliest days of hunter/gatherers who did not eat or stay warm if they failed the hunt, to tribal and feudal societies in conflict, nation states and kingdoms surprised by war; famine, plagues, natural disasters, fire, thievery, rulers, the church, the dark ages, peasants, serfs, slaves, revolutions, world wars, the atomic age; the faithful beast of anxiety has always lingered in real and imagined crisis.  

Lest the beast of anxiety be misunderstood, let me emphasize we need it. Without it the hunter/gatherer would have done neither, the uprisings of freedom would have remained stillborn and as a result, our world would have progressed very little. There can be no absence of anxiety, therefore there must be a relationship established with it.

I love history and enjoy its context in my contemplation. I am, inexorably from this time (era), and cannot realistically expect to remove my bias. I remain curious of the time in which I live with the working hypotheses, that what is chronic today is not our anxiety, but rather our expectation of a worry-free world.

Now my dear reader, I do not want to labor convincing you of any conclusion, I only want to provoke the thought in you. Engage your senses and follow your path with a sober solicitation of the unknown. As for me, my mind is a rabbit warren of secret missives and clandestine thoughts waiting to be discovered, decoded and acted on within the Zeitgeist of my mind. For this is where I am today, you must follow me if you want to know where I’ll be tomorrow. This is my particular brand: Foreplay for Life. This is how I adapt to injustice and captivity. This is where I move from theories of words to execution of their true definitions. If you ponder how a wild creature such as myself can live in captivity with the yawning gaze of anxiety bound beside me, look no further than this: I exercise my equanimity of choice in piercing the veil, revealing anxieties impotence in revelation; holding fast to my present imagination and the cherished emancipation of my spirit free from the paralytic of fear. All this I do through the power of love.

I cherish you all.

This is Steven in the Blind… Signing out…

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