Large Fierce Mammal

First published on October 4, 2018

Depiction of the fifth circle of Hell, by Stradanus (1523 – 2 November 1605) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stradanus

Anxiety, like feeling stressed, depression, anger, boyhood, and a plethora of other ordinary human conditions and responses to the tides of Life, has been deemed in this age of ours “not wanted on voyage” and thus consigned to the lists of treatable pathologies. In the old days, by which term I have come to refer to most of my life up to now, we reserved such a branding for cases in which the condition has come to preclude the victim from any meaningful participation in the society that surrounds him or her. An impairment of engagement in what, at any given time, might be referred to as “normal” life, but now rejected wholesale as being too normalnormative. In such cases, hope only lay in seeking the counsel of clergy, later professional psychologists, and of course, there has always been suicide.

Decant your favourite mood enhancer, Good Reader, and relax while tonight’s Dark Sentiment examines the matter.

Anxiety

By LFM

Anxiety’s a nasty thing
Of thorny claws and poisoned sting.
It feeds on joy and shits despair,
Is hard to kill and far from rare.

It crawls inside its victim’s head,
And fills the place with turds of dread.
It pisses on each happy spark,
Then giggles in the hopeless dark.

But though the thing is hard to kill,
There is this little poisoned pill
That some have found to be a cure,
But only if the drug is pure.

The drug is Truth, and truth be told,
This bitter pill, quaffed down with Bold’s
The one known cure to end the reign
Of cloying doubt and self-disdain.

I will admit it’s hard to find,
This bitter Truth I’ve here defined,
So let me offer this wee guide
To clear the path to joy denied.

To sweep away the clouds of doom,
For that you’ll need a bigger broom,
A shovel too, that’s stout and wide,
To clear the shit against the tide.

When all your joie de vivre has fled,
So dooms and failures fill your head,
And on bad outcomes you would dwell,
You swim the fifth-most arc of Hell.

Hell’s not exclusive to the dead,
It’s but a choice you make instead
While you still eat and draw a breath,
So every day’s a living death.

Both good and bad will come along,
And either one is worth a song.
Their balance though, that’s up to you —
Your choices made, and things you do.

You only know the things you know
And more, the further on you go,
Fear not to act, don’t hold your breath!
In stillness you’ll find nought but death.

So live, and learn, and be fulfilled,
Up to the day your heart is stilled.
Don’t let your joy of life depend
On vague despairs it all will end.

Of course it will, but while it lasts,
Why let small sours spoil repasts?
Or dim the flavours of your joys
To feed a thing life’s joy destroys?

For in a life of any length
Some days will be a test of strength.
Know you may win or you may fail,
And even winning, not prevail.

But dazed and bloodied, don’t forget,
To show the foe you’re not dead yet.
Seize the day with all its toils,
Don’t doubt you’re worthy of the spoils.

Anxiety’s a nasty thing
Of thorny claws and poisoned sting.
It wants to make your head its lair —
Go hunt it down and kill it there.