I was climbing with my son Silas yesterday. We’ll be doing that a lot this holiday. It’s brilliant fun – but it makes me anxious.
Although the wall is only around four metres high, there are no ropes or harnesses, so if you fall, you hit the ground. I’m not brave and some moves make me nervous. Silas is better than me though and he knows what to go for and what to leave. Even so, he’s twelve, he’s small and he’s my son, so I fret. He’s smart, but I’m still anxious.
Being anxious seems to infect the rest of my life too. My work is different every day depending on which students I’m teaching, which objects from the Museum I’m using and where; so every day I worry about the relevance of the class, the potential to damage the objects, and the possibility of having failed to book a study room.
At home, I worry about the damp patch on the ceiling of the back room and whether we should change our electricity supplier. I worry about the speeding ticket I got in Spain. I worry about how much of my salary goes directly into bread, eggs and milk. And when I turn on the news, I worry about interest rates and whether I’ll have to cut out bread eggs and milk completely to pay the mortgage.
In the Bible, St Paul has a very simple message about anxiety.
Writing to his friends in the city of Philippi he tells them simply, ‘do not be anxious’. Instead, he suggests that they take their problems to God. The result, he says, is that ‘the peace of God…will guard your hearts and minds’.
It’s an excellent trade off: we’re not alone in the dark, sweaty, wakeful hours of the night, and we get some rest from worrying at last.
I’m not saying it will end my many anxieties – I’m human, and they’re part of me – but it’s good to know that there’s a way of coping with them.
If you look carefully at the picture, you can see a very small Silas climbing the cliff at Porthcurno in Cornwall. He was 4. This is why I am anxious.