To be a rabbit with wise eyes requires anxiety, experience, fecundity, and the ability to find a fourth way: one that is not fight, flight, or freeze. This little essay plays with the mechanics of anxiety, using Lisa Olstein's poem ("Rabbit with Wise Eyes" from Little Stranger) and Philip Larkin's ("Myxomatosis" video).
From "A Rabbit with Wise Eyes"
...
What part of the mind speaks
to the part of the mind exploding
with pain?...
Raw skin toughens by degrees...
Because prey runs, we learn not to run,
not to turn our backs or look away
from the predator we dread and long
again to see because what we dread most
is it seeing us without being seen...
--Lisa Olstein
This is as fine a description of anxiety as I've ever read, as fine as William Styron's description of depression in Darkness Visible. The desperate dialog between anxiety and ability teeters between panic and focus, and it's where I spend a lot of time if I've managed to avoid the depressive abyss.
I wonder, how do I talk to myself when I am the only thing standing between myself and a desperate decision? How do I manage my ever-breeding thoughts (cf. King Richard) so that I have a flock and not a stampede?
Philip Larkin has this to say in "Myxomatosis:"
Caught in the centre of a soundless field
While hot inexplicable hours go by
What trap is this? Where were its teeth concealed?
You seem to ask.
One of the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy, as I understand it, is to examine the belief that drives negative behavior and rehearse the expected outcomes so that they're more realistic. Raw thoughts, toughening by carefully measured degrees, claim to deliver us from a predator-prey relationship we have with ourselves, a relationship that seeks relief from escalating fear by leaping directly toward the most frightening conclusion.
Olstein's rabbit is learning not to run, but it can't learn not to fear. Pretty much how I feel, mouthing affirmations. I can fill my head with a prayer or a verse or a line from a website, but the Gordian knot in the center remains. I can breathe for relief, but nothing else changes in the world I'm interacting with, the predators I fear. I may have thought things would come right again if I could only keep still and wait--given that I have done what I ought--and now I am left here tonight, whispering, Lord, let your loving kindness be upon those who trust in You.
It is an improvement on the alternative, but it doesn't fix the problem, the problem of living.
From "A Rabbit with Wise Eyes"
...
What part of the mind speaks
to the part of the mind exploding
with pain?...
Raw skin toughens by degrees...
Because prey runs, we learn not to run,
not to turn our backs or look away
from the predator we dread and long
again to see because what we dread most
is it seeing us without being seen...
--Lisa Olstein
This is as fine a description of anxiety as I've ever read, as fine as William Styron's description of depression in Darkness Visible. The desperate dialog between anxiety and ability teeters between panic and focus, and it's where I spend a lot of time if I've managed to avoid the depressive abyss.
I wonder, how do I talk to myself when I am the only thing standing between myself and a desperate decision? How do I manage my ever-breeding thoughts (cf. King Richard) so that I have a flock and not a stampede?
Philip Larkin has this to say in "Myxomatosis:"
Caught in the centre of a soundless field
While hot inexplicable hours go by
What trap is this? Where were its teeth concealed?
You seem to ask.
I make a sharp reply...
...I'm glad I can't explain
Just in what jaws you were to suppurate:
You may have thought things would come right again
If you could only keep still and wait.
The rabbit in each poem is still: one in its wisdom in looking for the predator it can't see, the other in the grip of its final hours, dying from the predator it can't see (a disease that was epidemic in England in 1953)....I'm glad I can't explain
Just in what jaws you were to suppurate:
You may have thought things would come right again
If you could only keep still and wait.
One of the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy, as I understand it, is to examine the belief that drives negative behavior and rehearse the expected outcomes so that they're more realistic. Raw thoughts, toughening by carefully measured degrees, claim to deliver us from a predator-prey relationship we have with ourselves, a relationship that seeks relief from escalating fear by leaping directly toward the most frightening conclusion.
Olstein's rabbit is learning not to run, but it can't learn not to fear. Pretty much how I feel, mouthing affirmations. I can fill my head with a prayer or a verse or a line from a website, but the Gordian knot in the center remains. I can breathe for relief, but nothing else changes in the world I'm interacting with, the predators I fear. I may have thought things would come right again if I could only keep still and wait--given that I have done what I ought--and now I am left here tonight, whispering, Lord, let your loving kindness be upon those who trust in You.
It is an improvement on the alternative, but it doesn't fix the problem, the problem of living.
