You’ve probably noticed it. My latest indicator was an experience at the shipping store this morning with Cheri. While she went in to send a package to her nephew, I stayed outside with the bikes.
Enjoying the lack of commitments or deadlines in the day, I stood under a shade tree and day-dreamed. My gaze settled on a leaf on the sidewalk. Wait. That’s not a leaf. It’s a twenty dollar bill.
I picked it up, noticing that it was near a car parked at the curb. So I walked into the shipping store and raised my voice through my mask so I could be heard, “Anybody in here own the white VW parked outside?”
The five customers and two clerks snapped their heads towards me. Everybody leaned away, their shoulders hunched up a bit. I caused the whole group to flinch.
“I found a twenty dollar bill next to the car outside”, I said. “I thought someone in here might have dropped it.”
Everyone instantly relaxed, shoulders lowered, exhaling almost together.
My second sentence should have been my first. I should have realized everyone’s emotions are on a hair trigger towards fear. And why wouldn’t they be? Looks like we’ll be in Pandemic Land for another six months at this rate. No matter the reasons; everyone has sort of made their choices and we’re just receiving the results. Then there’s politics in general. The Republicans and the Democrats are spending like crazy trying to control the public discourse towards their favor, working up to the mid-term elections next year, using fear of the “Other” like never before. Shootings seem to be a daily occurrence. Record heat waves all over the world. Record wild fires. Record floods. Record hospitalizations. Geez, wouldn’t it be great to not be getting weekly gold medals in mayhem?
So, yeah, people are on edge.
Something you learn along the path of studying human behavior is how our nervous system responds to perceived threats. A great book on the subject I’d highly recommend is “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers” (by Robert Sapolsky, 3rd edition 2014, Henry Holt & Company). Probably the key point in the book, answering the title’s question, is that unlike animals, humans can experience existential threats in their imagination, based on informational stimuli in their environment. Some of the imaginary threatening stimuli is based on historical fact of experience, of course. But much of the perceived threats are expectations of danger, without material physical evidence to warrant a fight-flight-freeze response. And we can’t get away from our internal world, whereas a zebra can outrun a panther. The zebra either survives or not. Problem solved either way. Event over. Back to grazing. No ulcers.
The constant, high-stress environment we perceive ourselves to be in causes us many health problems, with ulcers being just one of the outcomes. Immune disorders, heart disease, high blood pressure, strokes, gastrointestinal dysfunction, anxiety, depression, etc, are all related to a continually overactive sympathetic nervous system. That’s the one that makes us jumpy.
Our society in the U.S., and probably many other countries, is awash on a daily basis with both real and imagined threats. It’s no wonder people are twitchy. What’s curious is just how compassionate we are at the same time. If you look, there are countless, amazing examples of people reaching out in love to help other people, every day.
Being in one state does not necessarily mean we aren’t also capable of being in the other. Acting out of compassion while one’s own safety is at risk is revered. It’s probably one of the defining qualities of Jesus, Buddha and Muhammad. People are doing it all the time, whether or not they follow a particular religion’s teachings. Compassion requires courage–the courage to choose to remain compassionate in the midst of conflict, taking action that creates peace and life-affirmation.
As it turns out, taking action is also the most effective way to counter-act the damaging effects of being in a constant state of fight-flight-freeze. Physical movement at the aerobic level of exertion is highly effective, but taking any physical action helps.
Like writing this piece to you, so that you might look at your own choices amidst the daily barrage of bad news, and perhaps choose to lighten someone else’s day tomorrow. Instead of barking at the lady who jay-walked mid-block in front of you, scaring you out of your wits, you might count to that good old number ten and think to yourself, “She is lost in thought. I hope it’s not about a loved one in the hospital.”
You might hold a door open for the grocery delivery driver as she brings a load of lettuce into your neighborhood store. You could call your half-brother who insisted on voting for the candidate you thought was a disaster, and see how he is. You could hand out cold filtered water to homeless people on your bike ride to the park. You could give your co-worker the benefit of the doubt when he missed a critical deadline you depended on, and seek first to understand.
If we all start looking for these opportunities to take action that affirms life, we can quench the heat of our emotions. We could look less at the constant, fear-based flood of media content specifically designed to get you to click. Which means we have to get off our phone screens, laptops and televisions long enough to do something positive with the time we otherwise would have spent in constant agitation.