The Uninstructed Worldling

I get anxious when I’m running out of time. H, because he’s a good friend, would tell me that is normal, and why should I fret about it. I fret about it because I don’t like the way it feels. I feel anxious. I feel like my body is uncomfortable. I feel like screaming. I feel like smashing my static hearing aid into the sidewalk which I really didn’t do. And this happens everyday, and everyday I respond the same way. I could blame the hearing aid people because it was getting late and my hearing aid was still buzzing. And tomorrow it will be something else. Maybe Mensa’s computer screen will turn to a snowstorm just when I need to go online, like it did yesterday. I feel like an ER doc, dealing with one thing after another, always with the restraint of time. Yes, I’m an uninstructed worldling, as Buddha called it. The question is what can I do about it. I do realize it is happening, which is supposed to be the first step. But what is the second step? I say to myself, or tonight to Mensa, who was on the phone with me as my aids were being adjusted. She calmly said that she’d stay with me as long as it took. Was she talking about tonight or the next 50 years? And if these second arrows, as Buddha called them, come every five minutes, we have to be quite an archer to fight them off. I think of the phrase, “and this too will pass.” Bertrand Russell used to worry about everything until he realized that anything that happened to him wouldn’t affect the universe. Then he relaxed and started to enjoy life, or so he said.