You could always try breathing

Post-pandemic, it has been brought to our attention that an entire generation (or maybe two) of young people are suffering from acute anxiety. The causes should be entirely obvious to us all, so I won’t bother detailing. 

I’m going to go out on a limb and state that none of us have escaped this curse. The parents of those young people, their grandparents, teachers, doctors, employers. Anyone who reads the newspaper. Anyone who made it through 2020, and anyone close to someone who didn’t. 

We’re all kind of shell-shocked. Even the happy among us, the newlyweds and the gold medal winners. Even the successful, with freshly minted higher degrees and eye-watering starting salaries. 

Maybe even the ones who meditate every day. But probably not the Dalai Lama. 

Please, not the Dalai Lama.

It’s taken me a while to realize that I'm stewing in a sludge of unease almost all the time, and I'm beginning see that anxiety is affecting the people around me, from co-workers to people in cars. There’s a heightened level of tension permeating the culture.

And let's not forget the trolls; those anonymous posters are the worst. They are so riddled with nervous terror they can’t do anything but try to rid themselves of it online. Silly trolls. That will never work. But it does contribute to the general sense that we’re balanced on a tightrope of fear and rage.

People who feel great are just not constantly angry and mean! Unless they are severely sadistic. It’s unfortunate, but a side effect of anxiety seems to be the need to cause harm. Often this looks like being mean to ourselves, sometimes it presents as being terrible to others. 

Those people who are making life harder for their fellows are also marinating in a brine of worry and angst. But they're compounding it by rolling in a spice rub made of loathing and regret, and then cooking slowly over the flames of exhaustion and Why Me. 

No wonder they’re cranky.

What to do, then, in a world gone wild in which anger and lashing out have not just become the norm, but are applauded as the discourse of power?

May I suggest a little nervous system regulation? 

It's not some woo woo mumbo jumbo, but a thing you have to do if you're a modern human and you've forgotten how to breathe properly. Or trust. It’s science! It just happens to be science which is having a moment, which is easy to conflate with some over-the-top TikTok wellness trend.

There are approximately 10,000,000,000 resources out there on how to tap into your parasympathetic nervous system and give your anxiety permission to stand down. I like bilateral stimulation, breath work, and hypnosis audios. You might like meditation, or tapping, or mindfulness.

The conundrum: regulation can be achieved in minutes, but must be repeated and repeated and repeated in order to really heal our anxious bodies and spirits. So while the practices can be simple, we’ve got to commit.

I have an idea. Bear with me; there are a few bugs to work out but I think it’s brilliant. 

When I was a child growing up in Hanover, NH, we heard the Noon Whistle every weekday at, well, noon. It emanated from somewhere on the Dartmouth campus, and you could hear it everywhere. 

"Whistle" might be a misleading term, unless you're thinking about trains. Here's a recording, uploaded by Frank Ostrander.

This was once a common sound in any factory town, though possibly in other places it marked the beginning of the work day, rather than the lunch break. It’s a pretty calming sound, honestly, and I miss it. But back to my idea. 

I’d like us to make a national commitment to an on-the-hour blast of this calming noise, at which point we all stop what we’re doing and spend two minutes passing a pen back and forth, or taking deep, vagus-nerve-stimulating breaths, or whatever method of nervous system regulation we choose.

Imagine how much better we’d all feel! And talk about pattern interruption; if you’re yelling at the guy who just pulled his gas-guzzling fantasy truck out of a driveway and nearly T-boned you, if the whistle blew you’d have to stop and breathe deeply and calm yourself. And so would he. 

And then maybe you’d decide that insulting him and his forebears and giving him a piece of your mind isn’t really worth the trouble and you might as well just get on with your day. For example. 

Now I admit this might be a bit hard to enforce, since we certainly want all the cops to engage in this exercise; they seem to need it more than the rest of us. And maybe they would find that pestering all those drivers who are clearly stopped only because they look suspicious, i.e. Black, is easier to avoid when their parasympathetic systems are in control.

I guess we’d have to exempt surgical staff, and air traffic controllers. But you get the idea.

Could this work? It’s only a pipe dream in a society committed to being Loud and Powerful, but I think it would be a good start.

I mean, I’m pretty sure we all need a little something that is not tv, weed, or alcohol to settle us the hell down. Like maybe more time not doing anything? Staring into the fire or the ocean? Hanging out in the sunshine? Putting down the phone?

And also we need a little more love, definitely a lot more self-love (not to be confused with arrogance) and then if we did some regulation exercises 24 times per day maybe we'd all be in better shape. 

Just a thought.

OK, love you, bye!

Julia

p.s. Did I mention that I'm 60?

Recommendation!

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalinithi (affiliate link)

First of all, let’s talk about titles. Because this is one of the best book titles I’ve ever seen. Like, even if you have no idea what the book is about it catches your attention. It’s evocative. And then when you realize that this is a memoir written by a man who is dying of lung cancer - well, it hunkers down in your soul and refuses ever to leave.

Anyway. When Breath Becomes Air is the story of a freshly minted neurosurgeon diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. It’s a gorgeous meditation on life and death. I won’t say more because honestly, Kalanithi is far more eloquent on the subject than I. 

This is a terrific read at any time, but if you happen to be facing any kind of existential crisis (and who isn’t?) it’s even better.

Maroon 5 understands that even breathing can be a challenge, and so does this email. Forward it to someone who could use a breath of fresh air.