April 6, 2026
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR…
“There is actually no more dangerous solitude than the man who is lost in a crowd, who does not know he is alone, and who does not function as a person in community either. He does not face the risks of true solitude or its responsibilities, and at the same time the multitude has taken all other responsibilities off his shoulders. Yet he is by no means free of care. He is burdened by the diffuse, anonymous anxiety, the nameless fears, the petty itching lusts, and all the pervading hostilities which fill mass society the way water fills the ocean.”
(Thomas Merton: New Seeds of Contemplation)
As I sit to write, and this only after several minutes of mindful breathing, I see slate-gray storm clouds piling up to the east. They evoke the same sense of urgency — in this instance to cover our outdoor furniture — as my roiling thoughts evoke in my mind. And, in my imagination, I see a mouse, threatened by the shadow of a cat, dashing to and fro in a desperate attempt to escape a macabre fate.
My first instinct is to phone a friend and vent, find some way to dissipate the nervous energy. With great effort I sit with it and observe mind and body. My hands flutter around and my heart rate speeds up.
My respiration becomes shallow. Fight, flight, or freeze hormones course through my body. My mouth is dry, my gut is currently in spasm, and I feel in desperate need of a nap.
I went for a swim instead.
In short, I spent an hour or two, if not more, at the mercy of my amygdala, or reptilian brain, flashing DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!
Leading the relatively quiet life of a retired homemaker, yoga teacher, wannabe athlete, I have successfully avoided most forms of stress in what one son calls my “room of ignorance,” a vacation home on a tropical island a couple of thousand miles from my real life. So when a brilliant AI professional set me up with a program to jump-start my blogging, I found myself wanting to flee from the responsibility of putting my money where my mouth is — literally.
I can now dictate my ideas to a computer (though I didn’t this time) and presto chango, the program gives me back a first draft in my own voice, only better. Using a half dozen AI agencies, it matches my spoken words to the closest examples in all of my earlier work, so that I not only have an extra pair of hands — vis-à-vis not having to do all the writing — but also an extra pair of eyes that happen to be smarter than mine.
The prospect of this brave new era in my blogging life put me into full-on panic mode Whereas, so far as I know, the computer is emotionally inanimate, I apparently have several psychological hurdles to surmount before I can get on with the program.
To be perfectly honest, one of the main reasons I quit was the pervasive inner voice that said, “Who actually “gets” this? Who wants or needs this? In fact, who even reads this?”
One can only argue with the inner judge and critic for so long, until finally all motivation — not to mention inspiration — is gone.
Luckily for me, a late afternoon swim helped calm my emotions and dissipate the nervous physical energy, until a small inner voice piped up with: I need this. That’s all it’s ever been about, really — a way to extend the spiritual conversation beyond the confines of my monkey mind. Like a message in a bottle, I floated out weekly messages in hopes that they reached sympathetic souls. I wanted to offer an alternative to “the pervading hostilities which fill mass society the way water fills the ocean”.
The antidote, according to Merton, is this:
“To live in communion, in genuine dialogue with others, is absolutely necessary if one is to remain human. But to live in the midst of others, sharing nothing but the common noise and the general distraction, isolates a man in the worst way, separates him from reality in a way that is almost painless.”
While life on a tropical island may seem like the isolation-from-reality that Merton describes, it actually gives me the time and space to observe human nature, including my own, up close and personal. Taking time to read and reflect, to journal and study, helps me see the consequences of my words and actions and make changes accordingly. Even if this means seeing how far my inner saboteur will go to keep me safe in a room of ignorance.
P.S. Can you imagine what would happen to my nerves if I won a lottery?