A Source of Anxiety

 There are noises in life that never quite fall silent. They echo without sound. They haunt without presence. My anxiety often comes wrapped in those invisible frequencies. Not alarms I can respond to. Not engines I can repair. The kind of noise that comes from what I cannot control.

A judge decides a future I cannot defend.
A hiring manager chooses someone I cannot influence.
A corporation thanks me for my service by pushing me out the door right when my family needs me steady.

Even silence can roar when the waiting begins.

And then there are the moments where control seems close enough to touch, but slips anyway. A car accident waiting to happen on a sunny Dubai day. A BMW 520 pulling out suddenly on the Palm. A Pakistani Uber driver making a mistake at the worst possible time. Metal colliding. Time slowing. The brain replaying all the alternate versions of the universe in which I had braked sooner. Or driven slower. Or stayed home.

The mind loves to ask questions that have no answers.
Why this.
Why now.
Why everything at once.

Anxiety is the soundtrack of powerlessness.

Yet here is what I wrestle with. That silent noise is not entirely an enemy. It warns me that I am alive and still want something better than survival. If I did not care about the outcome, there would be no anxiety at all. The noise exists because the stakes are real.

The trick is to keep the anxiety honest. Let it remind me of what matters, but do not let it rewrite who I am.

I cannot control judges.
I cannot control layoffs.
I cannot control other drivers.
I cannot control timing.

But I can control whether I let fear drive the car.

Most of the worst things never actually happen. Most of the crashes get avoided. Most of the closed doors lead to different rooms. Anxiety tries to convince me that chaos rules. Experience tells me that resilience does.

Silence will never fully return. The mind remembers too much. But the noise can become something else. Not a warning of doom. A reminder of strength. Proof that after each collision or disappointment or loss, I am still here.

Still thinking.
Still working.
Still refusing to let life narrow me down to fear.

If anxiety is the sound of what I cannot control, then courage is the decision to move forward anyway. And courage, unlike fate, is always within reach.

Here is the question I will not let you avoid.
Do you fear the bad things happening again?
Or do you fear that they changed you into someone who worries they always will?

I write

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