Is It Okay to Be Freaking Out rn?

The one luxury you can't afford.

The world of today gives us no shortage of causes for alarm; I think this would be true even if we had achieved the global human connection posited by the “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” spot that is credited as “the world’s most famous commercial” (though that might just be more marketing). However, even if otherwise decent people weren’t routinely at each other’s throats over anything and everything, Tucker Carlson didn’t have a top-ranked podcast (Jesus wept) and I hadn’t been awakened about 30 hours ago by the dozen drunk idiots who decided to “rumble” as they were released from the nightclub around the corner, there is no question that the damage we have done to a lot of essential things well exceeds our deposit, and there is plenty more that we have failed to prepare or repair. As we all should know by now, when these are the conditions, consequences are never far behind. Put simply, that’s the world we’re living in.

Not The Real Thing, sadly.

Last week, I made reference to the tendency of earlier generations to downplay catastrophe while accusing successive ones of being “sensitive” or “dramatic.” I am probably not alone in thinking that the newer conventional wisdom to “feel our feelings” has probably yielded more effective dividends than locking them a vault and promptly discarding the key, but surely there are limits, right? Or – as you may have been asking yourself since Thursday night – is It Okay to Totally Freak Out?

I’m going to respond less subtly than I usually do, since I do generally try to withhold my conclusion, if only to ramp up the suspense:

Just don’t. Resist the urge. Don’t freak out.

Why? Not because you aren’t entitled to your concerns; I have them too. Not because I have some inside track on a silver lining or Hail Mary save; I do not. The reason is simply that freaking out doesn’t help you help you or anyone else.

This is not the same as not caring, of course, or sticking your head in the sand (which it’s understandable to still do periodically, I think – we all need a break). But we’ve become so accustomed to treating hysteria as the norm – even about sunny, happy things, like celebrity red carpets and sold-out stadium concerts. And I think all of it ultimately conspires to generate more apathy, or even paralysis – a cycle where we are only spurred to address things when they are really bad, or are immobilized by fear and dread. Neither reaction is getting us very far.

I won’t try to persuade you that this isn’t an unsettling time in news, in politics, and even perhaps in history. Our response to conditions like these seems to be TOTALLY LOSING OUR SHIT until we can reset by self-soothing with our anesthetic of choice (maybe booze or work for the old-timers, working out and weed for the hipper types, and apps for everyone else: Netflix! TikTok! Draft Kings! Net-a-Porter! Candy Crush! Tinder!). Or we make a bunch of declarations and rash decisions, point fingers and designate “task forces” (remember June 2020?) that muddy the waters and pull resources away from the issues really at hand. Or we just post on social media, which often just boils down to what we think other people should do, not what we are prepared to do ourselves – like we heard the world was auditioning more “thought leaders,” or we’re just passing along a message we think someone should read. Both have the effect of making us feel better but it’s hard to prove they do much for anyone else.

The truth is that freaking out is for people who think someone else is coming to fix the mess. It’s why babies cry and disgruntled patrons demand the attention of the manager. But this ardent dissatisfaction without a pledge to action just turns us all into a bunch of pissed off Yelp reviewers, demanding apologies from our servers or access to the secret menu – potent in the short term, perhaps, but ultimately easy to write off. Responding to peril with a hastily revised plan – or no plan at all – just compounds its threat.

Though I think the internet has been the chief driver of our penchant for collective madness, I do think it’s very American to favor extremes, big bets, solo acts, instant fixes. We like things “on 11.” The noise distracts us from the fact that while bad things can happen quickly, good things usually take a long time – as well as many hands – to build. Any disappointment we have in our leaders, or our “options” is something we will not truly get over or fix until we are willing to accept that we have to find our way out together. It is not because we made the wrong decisions – most of the time – but because we believed that individuals could restore what we all had a hand in breaking. It’s the difference between thinking of politicians as people who “work for us” versus those who “represent us” (if you’ve ever been introduced as “x, who works for me,” the distinction is surely not lost on you).

Luckily, the remedies for both panic and broken things are the same: Resolve. Service. Maintenance. These are the things that I hope will lead us back to the Middle Ground between Despair and Insanity — or is it Insanity and Despair — that most of us are probably so convinced that we’ll never see again that we don’t even let ourselves remember what it used to be like. Or imagine how it could be.

If you’re not planning to vote in November or are you’re merely planning to “protest vote,” I only request that you ask yourself if there are not better ways to feel heard. Because my wish for you is that there is at least one thing you care about more than defiance — that’s a hard way to go through the world. And if you’re merely voting, can you educate yourself on races in your district or other states that might benefit from some small dollar donations and those willing to spread the word others? If you’re already donating, volunteer. If you’re volunteering, maybe you want to get more involved with a community organization – not all change happens in statehouses. Maybe one day you will even run for office, but you could also serve on a committee or become involved with a group that will make you aware of opportunities for optimization or reform of a current system or practice. There’s nothing so persuasive as experience; people like doers more than they like talkers. And I suppose that has been my point all along.

I recently asked a friend if she had many contemporaries who had sought or were in elected offices; despite the fact that the 44^th President was the average of our two ages when he was elected, we each knew precisely one US Representative plus the same person running for a city government job — in another state. We can hardly complain (that other thing we love to do) about the demographics of our current leadership if we are not currently putting in the hours that will be necessary to be their worthy replacements.  

I’m no Miss Cleo, but as we have officially headed into the second half of this calendar year (rabbit, rabbit) and have just over 5 months until Election Day, I’m going to wager that it’s going to get tougher before it gets easier. All I can tell you is what I tell myself: we can’t lose hope, but we can’t just hope. We have to work. But the good news is this: it’s a lot harder to go crazy when you’re busy.

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