I’ve seen someone die now, and this really drove that fact home for me on a visceral level. He died and was clearly dead and won’t come back. Ever. And the same will happen to me.

For me, it’s more like “achievement anxiety”: I get deathly afraid of dying before having achieved anything worthwhile. Of course, “worthwhile” is in the eye of the beholder, so maybe I have already achieved worthy things. Finding love, for one, and standing by my love as best I can. Really, really loving our two cats and trying to make their lives long and happy. (And, like you said, I too sometimes think “Oh noes, they will die eventually!” *much wailing and gnashing of teeth*. Not to mention the times I think the same thoughts about my wife… :’-( )

I’ve always thought my fear was caused by my being to ill to really do much of anything, but seeing as you did/do achieve stuff, maybe that isn’t the root of this problem. Could it be some kind of midlife thing? Like: when you were young you thought you were going to be awesome and super wise and know everything. And now you’re just the same person you were then, maybe a little wiser but not enough to know everything or even wtf being an adult even means.

For me, the illness still seems important. I’ve managed to get a Master’s (in Biology), I’m intelligent and creative, but I can’t do much with these assets. Haven’t lost hope yet, but my life is at least halfway through and there’s little to show for it. Although, again, “little” is in the beholder’s eye. Maybe this one gay kid I once talked to online and got to reconsider his self-hatred, maybe that kid will live a happy life and maybe I have contributed to it. Maybe being friendly to some random person behind a counter has had some kind of butterfly effect for that person. Maybe that is all there is, being a part of humanity in whatever way is available and fitting for you.

Recently I’ve realised that I’m still not a “ma’am” (“mevrouw” in Dutch, my native language) in my own eyes, at 39 years old. Even worse, I’ll probably never become one. Even worser, all those other people, including dignified elderly ladies, probably don’t really feel like “ma’ams” inside either. Don’t know if this has anything to do with what you’re saying, but it feels as if it does. I wish it wasn’t so damned vague…

Anyway, lots of rambling to let you know that holy mackerel, I really feel I do that, too! 🙂

If we’re going to be humanist, we have to accept that we’re human.

Bravo, Greta.  That last line alone was worth the price of the essay.

Now relax.

There. That’s better…

Here’s an example. Throughout my life, and more so in recent months, I’ve been working on being more present in my life: fully experiencing my life, and being conscious of it, and letting it sink in. But in stretches of my life when I’m not being fully present — when I’m just spacing out, watching bad TV or messing around on Facebook or simply staring out the window having little self-aggrandizing fantasies and letting my mind wander — I sometimes snap back into consciousness, almost in a panic. ACK! I’m not being present and mindful! I’m not living up to my humanist ideals! What am I doing? My very existence is a precious, fragile, wildly improbable flickering of a unique consciousness in the vastness of time and space! Why am I spending it watching “Top Chef”?

When dealing with performance anxiety, it helps to focus on whatever you’re doing. (Also, make sure you’re rested, well-fed, and avoid other things that you find cause or exacerbate such anxiety. Or see a doctor and ask them about it, not me, if you need to.)

But exactly what do I mean by “focus on whatever you’re doing”? If you’re playing a piece of music, just do that well. (Simple, right?) That is to say, do not turn your attention to yourself, or how well you think you’re doing that thing you’re doing. That is one of the causes of the performance anxiety in the first place. Doing it even more will not help. You’re going to make mistakes, and you’re going to feel anxiety/fear/regret/etc. about them. (You can even imagine mistakes that don’t happen or amplify them beyond what they really are.) Overconfidence and hubris and so on can also be detrimental of course. The point is, these will be experiences you have, like it or not, so just go on doing that thing you’re doing. That is (among other things like sleep, food, etc.) what will allow you do it as well as you can — not focusing on your immediate judgment of whether you’re doing it well or poorly, but focusing on what you’re doing while it’s happening. These thoughts are directed “out,” in some sense, to stuff other than you. You’re thinking about the music you’re playing, the speech you’re giving, or whatever work you happening to be performing.

So, being inward-directed (or “mindful,” if that’s what you mean by that) is definitely not something you should always do. You shouldn’t take it as a failure on your part, if you find yourself not doing it all of the time. I’m sure it would be exhausting, but other than finding out some things about that kind of experience, I don’t know what purpose it would really serve. You should of course always be doing your best, but judging yourself can get in the way of that. Indeed, why would it be a problem that we aren’t always doing it? Self-evaluation isn’t what we ought to be best at — we ought to be best at living a life, not simply best at the constant evaluations of our lives that we might confuse with the real thing.

I feel like this needs to be stressed another way, because as your interesting article shows, we use lots of different concepts to grasp at these issues, so I’ll try to put it a little differently. Being “present” in the moment, if you’re a musician or a speaker or whatever, definitely doesn’t mean you ought to turn your attention to yourself (i.e., whatever your brain is telling itself that it is doing). You ought to be present in the whole moment itself, which is what you’re creating (in part), not just present “within yourself” and thinking about your own thoughts. Your thoughts only represent what you think is happening; they aren’t the real thing. And you should really save the meditation and such for the period before a performance (which I suppose isn’t applicable in the case of life in general — sadly, we get no time to practice or warm up for that), while trying to maintain a positive attitude about what you’re going to do. Think about what it is to do that thing successfully, not so much about your own feelings toward your success or failure (or past successes and failures).

I strongly suspect — although I’d have to ask the neuropsychologists about this — that semi-conscious spacing-out is essential for our brains to function, in much the way that sleep and dreaming are essential. It’s pretty clear to me that some sort of back-burner processing is going on during that down time.

I want to point out that there are countless times I’ve performed when it seems as though I had just been “semi-conscious” or that I was “spacing-out.” Maybe you’d call it an altered state like sleep or dreaming, or maybe something like it is so common that being fully self-aware and self-critical in this extravagant sense is properly what ought to be called an altered state. The point here is that it isn’t just about relaxation or needing down time or something like that. This is an example that is about as active as it gets; “I” just wasn’t quite there to witness the activity and give “my” take on it, not while I was doing it. I don’t mean anything especially profound here, just that the way you focus on a task like that involves taking “yourself” out of the picture in some sense. You don’t need those sorts of self-referential brain functions then, and indeed they only seem to get in the way.

Anyway, I don’t think it’s an “imperfection” or a “weakness” of ours that this is how our brains work. I think the fault lies with unrealistic goals like always being “mindful,” always being “present,” always being self-critical, always battling theocracy (or any other highly-specific goal), etc. Sometimes you just have to actually go out and do stuff. Self-criticism shouldn’t get in the way of that, nor does it need to. It can come in the preparation for what you’re doing, as well as afterward.

You often speak my mind.

I don’t know how we get around the problem of being mentally, perceptively, underpowered to fully partake of the universe about us. Further: anything we do, big or small, seems so insignificant compared to being… well, *not* being … ie: dead. Mortality makes everything else seem so trivial.

We cannot let these facts distract us. I don’t think a total inadequacy, as I describe, should hold us back. We just need to accept that we are less than we pretend to be. That the huge, overarching, *cosmic* significance we are want to attach to ourselves is not borne out by reality. We are one of billions. We share similar concerns. Our brains function in similar fashions. Our limits, hopes and potentials aren’t much different. We are all inadequate to the task.

Being more than our, fallible, selves is not about being ourselves-as-individuals. It is about being part of much larger whole. This last is (at least in principle) contained in the religious experience. But also (more relevant in our case) in the scientific endeavour. And ( here is the point) in the Humanist endeavour.

We have a very real choice as to what we can contribute to. In lasting terms, we cannot contribute much with our very short existences. Ozymandias famously discovered this simple truth( and in a rather simple fashion); he died.

What we can contribute, we must decide carefully. We each have little to add. For the reasons that you articulate. I think it less important that one contribute little, than that one contribute to the correct initiative. Take care of one’s self. This is very important. Because only then can one contribute to one’s true capacity.
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