There are two ways in which philosophy can help us with anxiety: a specific doctrine may offer us a prescription for how to rid ourselves of anxiety; and philosophical method—self-introspection and reflective thinking—may help us understand our anxiety better. While fear and worry (and their resultant stresses) are grounded in specific objects and circumstances, ‘anxiety’Continue reading “On Not Being Anxious About Anxiety”
Tag Archives: anxiety
Parenting As Refuge From Writing
Writers who are parents love to complain about how parenting takes up writing time; so many great books, essays, plays, short stories, screenplays and the like remain unwritten because caring for a child is time-consuming and emotionally draining. Other members of the writer’s tribe–or sometimes the same folks–will readily admit that parenting provides great materialContinue reading “Parenting As Refuge From Writing”
Walking Far Enough To Find Our Way Back To Ourselves
In ‘Running Through Fear,’ an extended excerpt from her memoir Running Home, ultra-marathoner Katie Arnold writes of the aftermath of an assault she suffered while out on the trail: Afterward, in the disorienting fog of sorrow, everything scared me: my babies, so small and vulnerable and precious; my own body, once so strong but nowContinue reading “Walking Far Enough To Find Our Way Back To Ourselves”
Philosophy As ‘Ways Of Seeing Things’
In Confessions of a Philosopher (Random House, 1997, pp. 399-400) Bryan Magee writes: [T]he most important things great philosophers have to give us are to be got at not by analysing the logic of their arguments or their use of concepts but by looking at reality in the light of what it is saying….”Is reality illuminated forContinue reading “Philosophy As ‘Ways Of Seeing Things’”
Fear Of Death Is Fear Of Immortality
We philosophize because we anticipate death, fearfully. We seek out religious consolation because we anticipate death, fearfully. We seek in philosophical rumination and religious observance and faith some deliverance from our mortality, some way to ‘stay alive,’ to not be annihilated. One kind of introspection these forms of thought encourage is to look a littleContinue reading “Fear Of Death Is Fear Of Immortality”
The Shames Of Anger
I’ve written before, here on this blog, about the pleasures of anger, of holding on to grudges–the two are, of course, inter-related, for very often it is the pleasure of experiencing anger that allows us to retain a long-held grudge. These ‘pleasures,’ such as they are, have a role to play in the economy ofContinue reading “The Shames Of Anger”
Climbing And The Persistent, If Irrational, Fear Of Falling
A curious experience in roped climbing (whether on auto-belay, top-roped climbing, or following a leader on a multi-pitch route) is the presence of instinctive fears that should have no rational basis for persistence. Like the fear of falling, for instance. There you are, tied in with your faithful figure-eight knot into your climbing harness, whichContinue reading “Climbing And The Persistent, If Irrational, Fear Of Falling”
Climbing The Grand Teton (And Finding Myself At The Top)
In August 2012, my wife and I went on a road-trip through parts of the American southwest and west: New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota were our most prominent destinations. We camped and hiked in several national parks; I made note of some of those experiences here. Among the national parks we hikedContinue reading “Climbing The Grand Teton (And Finding Myself At The Top)”
Summits As Virtuous Constraint
This past summer, on July 8th, as noted in a post here, I climbed Long’s Peak in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. A minute or so after I stepped on to the summit, grabbed a quick sip of water, and removed my helmet, I shook my guide Rob Smith‘s hand, and thanked him profusely. IContinue reading “Summits As Virtuous Constraint”
Don’t Know What You Got Till It’s Gone: A Climbing Lesson
This past Saturday, after falling, for the proverbially umpteenth time, off a climbing route at The Cliffs in Long Island City, I walked off, wondering yet again, this time loudly enough for gym staff members to hear me, whether it was worse to have never climbed a route in the first place or to keepContinue reading “Don’t Know What You Got Till It’s Gone: A Climbing Lesson”
Samir Chopra 