A Lexicon for Life: Episode 5 — Anxiety

Anxiety is rife, caused variously by the fear of climate change, by the destabilising of political structures and the speed of technological development. No-one can be free of anxiety while being aware of what is happening in the world.“Young people are suffering a never-before-known sickness, eco-anxiety, as time is running out for the climate, the soil, and the oceans and so many creatures are threatened with extinction,” writes Jay, in Nemesis, My Friend. “The Dominant Culture is breaching the limits of what the world can stand, a transgression like no other in its consequences. In a few decades, it has seized resources, broken the wise and necessary limits, taken more than its due, stolen life itself from the future. In its greed and in its hubris, it has endangered the coral reefs, the bees, the Everything.”Jay, Joanna and John discuss what is possible to reduce anxiety, to harness it and to help face the “unhallowed” nature of the assault on what Jay calls our “mental sovereignty”. Our connection to animals is one of the ways to model a healthier, less anxious way to be. “Donkeys,” Jay writes in How Animals Heal Us, “are the archetype of gentleness, the holy animal of the Christ story twice over, once at the beginning and once at the end, and they seem to meditate by default as they are animals of endurance, patience and tranquillity.” Similarly, dogs are “medicine for high anxiety”: “We humans have been living alongside them for some 32,000 years and they give us a deep sense of safety as they can smell and hear far further out into the world than we can, so in the ancient memory of our atavistic genes, we know that they are offering us rings of protection wider than we can provide for ourselves. When a dog is there, calm, happy, maybe snoozing, an ancient part of the psyche knows ‘the camp is safe.’”You can order any of Jay Griffiths’ books from her online shop at Bookshop.org Get full access to Byline Times at www.bylinesupplement.com/subscribe