Phone a friend

I’ve been having anxiety dreams lately. But not just the regular kind.

Last week, a man is choking on a massive bone—picture the femur of a dinosaur wedged deep inside a person’s throat—and I am frozen in place.

Oh, and here’s another one. More benign but no-less-stressful.

I’m trying to reconcile three versions of a speech I’m editing on deadline. First, I can’t find my papers. Then I can’t find my glasses. Finally, the power goes out and I’m panicking in the dark. The lights go on and it starts all over again.

Right now, the sun is shining and I’m writing because I want to. I’m in my bed with coffee. And yet. MY HEART IS RACING. 

If you voted this week, know anyone with Covid (or who’s waiting for results of a test)—or any of your friends (or you) have cancer, memory failure, uncertainty about employment, your hair is thinning unnaturally, or you have a kiddo who is out in the world—maybe you’re anxious too.

So, what’s to be done?

Return to the breath.

My nightmares happen to coincide with my reading of Pema Chödrön’s Start Where You Are.  

She says that when we let go of resistance, our demons can disappear. Put another way, we have to first breathe in our fear or rage or melancholy. Only then can we breathe it out.

What you are actually doing is cultivating kindness toward yourself and compassion toward others.

I love Pema, but today that feels a bit woo woo.

Let everything be just as it is.

My other “guru” of sorts is Sam Harris, the neuroscientist host of the Waking Up Course and related podcast. In his daily meditation of October 14, he suggested that everything is in its place and everything is all there is in each moment.

What if this is it? What if nothing is missing and there’s nothing to wait for? Nothing to improve? We could give up all effort and just notice what appears?

I’m down with the Stoics, but today that feels a bit passive.

Phone a friend!

Nobody had to tell me this one. And I didn’t have to read it in a book. When I hear the voice of a friend, I feel less alone. When I call a client for more direction, the assignment turns out better.

So, lately I’ve been picking up the phone. I want to hear laughter when I crack a joke. I want to hear silence on the line and know we both are present and processing. If a friend is choking on tears, I want to hear that too.

As we hunker down for the third wave of Covid, and brace ourselves for election results, there’s no reason to spend our lives on text. Or on Zoom. Or locked in our private nightmares.

My dreams—I see it now—were about having a voice.

That massive bone prevented the man from speaking. My scramble for papers was my effort to help a client who had something to say.

And about the phone? I used to hate it. But these days, it’s a small, private, intimate way we can use our voices for good.

So, pick it up. Punch in some numbers.

Tell a friend you love her.