Anxiety Ignites the Phoenix and Kills the Zombie
A letter from Nullman
Dear No One,
I’ve been listening to Paul Tillich’s The Courage to Be on audiobook. He defines anxiety ontologically as ‘the existential awareness of non-being.’
When I’m anxious, I’m anxious about being the wrong way. I’m aware that there are multiple ways that I could be, but I don’t know which way is the right one.
This stresses me out because I’m trying to be in two places at once — in the moment and ahead of it. I’m trying to live life while strategizing about how to live it.
Every time I’m aware of other ways that I could be, I’m also aware of non-being. That’s because non-being is the essential space between potential ways of being.
Non-being is like the space that separates and envelopes the planets. If the space didn’t exist, then the planets couldn’t exist. There would be nowhere for them to be.
Space invades my soul and separates me from myself. Now, I’m anxious. I’m ‘self-conscious’ or ‘self-aware.’
I’m aware that I’m not who I could be. I’m aware of who I am not. I’m aware of non-being.
Every human soul is an active tension between being and non-being. The energy of potential lies in the tension. In anxiety, potential intensifies, increasing the tension between being and non-being.
Often, an anxious person will feel existentially paralyzed. Their being is pulled in too many potential directions at once. Being and non-being play tug-of-war with their soul. The person becomes trapped in the middle of an invisible war for the future of their being.
I prefer the terms life and death to being and non-being. New life is new being. Every time being renews, it emerges from itself, like a phoenix arising from the ashes of its corpse. Every time life changes, the old being dies and its death gives birth to the new.
Understanding anxiety as a war between life and death can increase anxiety. Severely anxious people often become confused about life.
They conflate being with physical existence. They fall into the idea that they must decide between physical suicide and continuing to live in anxiety. The real choice is not between physical life and physical death, but between the current way of being and a new way of being.
Every time someone intentionally chooses to be a new way in a state of anxiety, they choose both real life (being) and real death (non-being). They simultaneously decide to live a new life and to kill the old life.
Every resurrection is a murder. Every intentional change of being is a phoenix ignition.
I’m sick of hearing about ‘new life’ from zombies. The zombies are everywhere. They are as confused about death as the suicidal overthinker is about life.
The suicidal person suspects that physical death will free him from a life of anxiety. He is exhausted of being caught in the awareness of life’s potential, trapped in the middle of all the different ways that he could be in the world.
The suicidal person doesn’t see how true freedom is found in the actual transformation of life, in the course of becoming a new being and actualizing his potential.
Inversely, the zombie believes that his ‘new life’ will free him from physical death. His ‘new life’ is not really new because it’s actually his current way of life. He’s stuck in his current form and afraid of the death of existential change. This is why he’s only ever half-alive.
The zombie only talks about life in two ways: The life he had before becoming a zombie, and his life now. He thinks that his current life (being, soul) will continue forever because he avoids true death in the same way the suicidal person avoids true life.
And he will continue forever. Zombies never die on their own. They wander the earth until physical death ambushes them, or until someone murders them and forces a transformation of their being.
The zombie’s mind can’t be changed because there is no tension between life and death within him. He lacks the space for internal disagreement about existence. There is too little death in his soul for him to ever truly die and be reborn.
I only want to hear what the phoenixes have to say about life. They are practical experts on resurrection. They burn themselves alive because they know that new life can only be found through the fire.
Yours,
Nullman