American Anxiety

I heard the term "American Anxiety" on PBS's "Journey to Palomar." It seems astronomer George Hale suffered from anxiety at a time when the whole United States was thought to be suffering en masse from the ailment (which I have intimate experience with). This was in 1906, the same year as the San Francisco Earthquake. We look back at times that far removed as slower, simpler, gentler, but they saw fast and intense change - technology (the airplane, the car, the telephone, electric lights), a world war was looming, vast numbers of Americans were moving from the family farm into crowded cities, the elevator allowed cities to build up rather than out, etc.

No generation escapes stress. You may find some pockets of time that are calmer than others, but even within those, people fear something, and fear it very much, from the days our ancestors worried about being eaten by lions and tigers and bears (oh my) to today, where we might fret over a lost cell signal in stalled traffic on a 100-degree day with broken air conditioning and being late for a meeting with the boss and I'm-gonna-look-like-a-drowned-rag-doll-when-I-get-there, all in about 5 seconds.

Seems at times life is little more than one long sentence punctuated briefly by a comma here and there for us to catch our breath until, at the end, we are out of commas, and out of breath, and God supplies a period.