Open Writing

*

Anxiety—uneasiness, concern; solicitous desire (for a thing, to do)

Towards the end of my two-year period of National Service, the Battalion was sent off to patrol a jungle area for a month. We were required to do this mostly on foot, but commandeered some power boats for river surveillance and communication. I spent the first part of this manoeuvre with my platoon in the jungle and for the second part stayed close to the CO. With the rivers in flood and small patrols scattered over a vast area, it became important to remain in touch by radio. My task was to keep him briefed so that he could transmit fresh orders for the following day.

It was early evening. Progress reports were coming in. One patrol had a major problem. They were required to reach a village the next day to collect a boat. The area through which they had to go was flooded. During that day they had already covered jungle with water up to their chests. (Gurkhas are notoriously bad swimmers). What should they do?

I discussed it briefly with the patrol commander. This was difficult because of radio interference—always an occupational hazard with evening atmospherics in that part of the world. My last words before we lost complete contact were—they must go ahead as planned.

An acute state of anxiety then set in. Had I in fact committed these men to their doom? A sleepless night ensued. In the early hours I could envisage the words of a court of enquiry—a dishonourable discharge seemed inevitable. There was nothing I could do to change the situation. It was out of my control.

The following evening the report came in. They had collected the boat—but the water had been at chin-level for some of them.

Anxiety hits us all from time to time. The quotations have been selected to help us face anxiety in a constructive and hopeful way.

Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you.
Psalm 55:22

Anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad.
Proverbs 12:25

Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O men of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day.
Matthew 6:25-34

Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
Philippians 4:6

People often do the idlest acts of their lifetimes in their heaviest and most anxious moments.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1971, page 197

In the depth of the anxiety of having to die is the anxiety of being eternally forgotten.
Paul Tillich, The Eternal Now, SCM Press, 1963, page 24

It is a help to have something to do, and not to creep about in a dim fatiguing dream of anxiety.
A.C. Benson, Extracts from the Letters of Dr. AC. Benson to M.EA, Jarrold Publishing, 1927, page 69

Anxiety, fear, ill-fated desire are signatures on the human face. Suffering and anxious care are written there.
Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, Charles Burnet & Co., 1887, page 18

Anxiety usually comes from strain, and strain is caused by too complete a depen-dence on ourselves, on our own devices, our own plans, our own idea of what we are able to do.
Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Burns & Oates, 1974, page 197

If what we have we receive as a gift, and if what we have is to be cared for by God, and if what we have is available to others, then we will possess freedom from anxiety.
Richard Foster, The Celebration of Discipline, Hodder and Stoughton, 1982, page 77

In our age everything has to be a 'problem.' Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves.
Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, Burns & Oates, 1958, page 71

It is probably good for most people to have an occasional shock of fright with reference to their shortcomings; but there is no doubt that to live under the constant pressure of fear—in the sense of anxiety concerning one's self—is deeply demoralising.
William Temple, Nature, Man and God, Macmillan & Co., 1934, page 460

The release of anxiety is to turn cares into prayers. If we feel anxious about somebody, ill or in danger or need, that anxiety does no good to us or to them. But if that anxiety is turned into a prayer, it widens and enriches our spiritual life, it turns a thought which is depressing into a thought which is uplifting, and it helps the person we are praying for.
Geoffrey Harding, in George Appleton, Journey for a Soul, Wiliiam Collins Sons & Co., 1976, page 114

... if God has you, then He has your yesterdays and your tomorrows. He has your yesterdays and forgives all that has been amiss in them; He has your tomorrows and will provide grace and power to meet them. But only as they come. He will not provide for what is not yet here. His grace is like manna—when kept over for the next day, it spoiled. It had to be eaten day by day.
E. Stanley Jones, Growing Spiritually, Hodder and Stoughton, 1954, page 45

In my own life, anxiety, trouble, and sorrow have been allotted to me at times in such abundant measure that had my nerves not been so strong, I must have broken down under the weight. Heavy is the burden of fatigue and responsibility which has lain upon me without a break for years. I have not much of my life for myself, not even the hours I should like to devote to my wife and child.
Albert Schweitzer, My Life and Thought, translated by C.T. Campion, Allen & Unwin, 1924, page 281

God is a Being, joyful, satisfied, and blessed. Let your spirit therefore be glad and satisfied. Avoid all anxious cares, all taking of offence, all murmuring and gloominess, which cloud the heart, and make it unfit for intercourse with God. Turn gently away when you perceive any of these things likely to beset you. Let the world and passing things be strange and foreign to your heart; but let it be at home with God, in the intimacy of love. Be as strict as you will with yourself, and your evil passions and self-love and self-will; but with God be free as a loving child with a Father, confiding restfully in Him, seeing in Him the Friend of your innermost heart, and imagining in Him nothing but perfect love.
Gerhard Tersteegen, in Frances Bevan, Sketches of the Quiet in the Land, John F. Shaw and Co., 1891, page 401

To live thus, to cram today with eternity and not with the next day, the Christian has learnt and continues to learn (for the Christian is always learning) from the Pattern. How did He manage to live without anxiety for the next day—He who from the first instant of His public life when He stepped forward as a teacher knew how His life would end, that the next day was His crucifixion, knew this while the people exultantly hailed Him as King (ah, bitter knowledge to have at precisely that moment!), knew when they were crying, 'Hosanna!', at His entry into Jerusalem that they would cry, 'Crucify Him!', and that it was to this end He made His entry; He who bore every day the prodigious weight of this superhuman knowledge—how did He manage to live without anxiety for the next day?
Soren Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses, translated by Walter Lowrie, Princeton University Press, 1974, page 78

The secret of happiness lies in the avoidance of Angst (anxiety, spleen, noia, guilt, fear, remorse...). It is a mistake to consider happiness as a positive state. By removing Angst, the condition of all unhappiness, we are then prepared to receive any blessings to which we are entitled. We know very little about Angst, which may even proceed from the birth trauma, or be a primitive version of the sense of original sin, but we can try to find out what makes it worse. Angst may take the form of remorse about the past, guilt about the present, anxiety about the future. Often it is due to our acceptance of conventional habits of living, through an imperfect knowl¬edge of ourselves...

Fatigue is a cause of Angst, which often disappears if the tired person is able to lie down; bad air is another... a frequent cause of Angst is an awareness of the waste of our time and ability.
Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave, Hamish Hamilton, 1945, page 22

The problem of anxiety has become a major problem of our time. How many forms of anxiety there are! There is anxiety about the delicately poised balance within the marriage situation. How many marriages are near to breaking-point, with few outside the family circle aware of the tragedy that threatens! There is anxiety about success. Ambition can be a disease. There is anxiety about our health. The duodenal ulcer has been described in America as the 'wound-stripe of our civilization' since it seems to be caused, partly at least, by the pace and problems of to-day. There is the anxiety which parents find it so easy to justify, anxiety about the children—their health, their future, their schooling, their happiness, their success. This very anxiety prevents parents from being the kind of companions to their children they want to be, and subtly, communicates itself to the children. That will-o'-the-wisp we call security is breeding edginess that makes security worthless when it is found. And underground all the time, burrowing at the roots of life, is the great nameless anxiety about the possibility of an atomic war that would wreck our civilization.
Charles S. Duthie, God in His World, Independent Press, 1955, page 15

The anxiety of meaninglessness is anxiety about the loss of an ultimate concern, of a meaning which gives meaning to all meanings. This anxiety is aroused by the loss of a spiritual centre, of an answer, however symbolic and indirect, to the question of the meaning of existence.

The anxiety of emptiness is aroused by the threat of non-being to the special contents of the spiritual life. A belief breaks down through external events or inner processes: one is cut off from creative participation in a sphere of culture, one feels frustrated about something which one had passionately affirmed, one is driven from devotion to one object of devotion to another and again on to another, because the meaning of each of them vanishes and the creative eros is transformed into indiffer-ence or aversion. Everything is tried and nothing satisfied. The contents of the tradition, however excellent, however praised, however loved once, lose their power to give content to-day. And present culture is even less able to provide the content. Anxiously one turns away from all concrete contents and looks for an ultimate meaning, only to discover that it was precisely the loss of a spiritual centre which took away the meaning from the special contents of the spiritual life. But a spiritual centre cannot be produced intentionally, and the attempt to produce it only produces deeper anxiety. The anxiety of emptiness drives us to the abyss of meaninglessness.
Paul Tillich, The Courage To Be, Nisbet & Co., 1952, page 44