Where Anxiety Resides: Finding Origin in a Drifting World
We, living in the modern age, continue to tremble in body and soul like floating weeds, severed from our roots. At times gently, at other times with terrifying velocity, we drift through a current that refuses to settle. The optimal path in this liquefied world may indeed lie in the very act of drifting; yet, even within this life of drift, a nameless anxiety constantly presses upon our daily existence. Whether the movement is physical or spiritual—whether driven by work, family, or one’s own volition—the portrait of the modern individual is one of living in a perpetual transition, craving, in the deep strata of the heart, to arrive somewhere. To explore this nameless locus—this “somewhere” our hearts truly seek—may bring a measure of salvation.
Why is it that in this “drifting life,” the obscure anxiety never dissolves, but feels as though it is constantly sedimenting in the depths of the heart? One might assume that choosing drift over sedentary immobility would alleviate anxiety. Furthermore, to survive in an era as precarious as ours, it is clearly more realistic to hone one’s adaptability to change through drift. However, humanity, unfortunately, does not necessarily find resonance with a solution simply because it is rationally optimal. This sensation of things “not sitting right” intensifies with each passing year of life, eventually becoming a reckoning that everyone must face. At that moment, how will you comport yourself? With what resolve will you decide to live?
To ponder not merely the cause of this sedimented anxiety, but why it arises in the first place and feels as if it is corroding you from deep within, becomes an unavoidable issue for everyone, given a world situation where drift is gradually becoming the norm. Those who have already experienced the drifting life are, in a sense, models who are attempting to live powerfully today while carrying this anticipatory burden. The problem lies in each individual pinpointing exactly where that anxiety originates.
Anxiety is a curious thing; it is not a simple discomfort. It holds a hidden inversion: by identifying its writhing location, the heart is significantly unburdened, and vitality returns to life. Conversely, those who feel anxiety in their daily existence actually possess the latent potential to survive life with vitality. At first glance, this may seem contrary to the modern view, but a way of living that feels no anxiety is, after all, merely a performance of concealment. In the context of human life, that is profoundly unnatural. Anxiety is not something to be loathed and excluded; it is, in fact, the catalyst that awakens vitality in our lives.
That is to say, feeling anxiety is itself natural and nothing to be denied. Because anxiety derives from the depths of a fundamental problem, if one can locate that depth and devise a countermeasure, there is no more potent weapon for the life that still lies ahead. When in your life will you confront this anxiety? This confrontation will become the greatest partner for living out the rest of your long journey.
As I see it, the “location of anxiety” invariably lurks within the sedimentation of the subject’s cognitive misalignments. In other words, anxiety does not lurk within life itself, but within your perception of it.
Furthermore, by identifying the location of this anxiety and practicing solutions in your daily life, you extend a possibility of salvation not only to yourself but to many others who harbor a shared anguish. Therefore, I cannot help but feel that those with the capacity for introspection need a strong resolve to face the anxiety they hold daily, no matter how painful or arduous it may be. For while the world only deteriorates under superficial humanism, the existence of those who have faced their anxiety thoroughly and carved a path to resolution through their own experience—however few they may be—can save people far more deeply and truly than any humanistic rescue.
Considering this, there is a clear point where modern people are significantly confused regarding the location of anxiety. It is the tendency to seek problem resolution by carelessly relying on the word “identity.” One need only look at the pandemic of the “identity crisis” in developed nations to see that, as a matter of fact, the problem remains unsolved. This is because the standpoint of the inquiry itself—the identification of the anxiety’s location—was promoted erroneously. As a result, even healthy people who did not originally harbor the pathology of an identity crisis were infected, and it surged into a global tide. At this moment, the true location of anxiety vanished from the view of the masses. One must see through this.