ANGST

[DEF: An unfocused feeling of anxiety or dread about the human condition or the state of the world]

We try to maintain a bold face, let’s hide our true feelings
No one likes a misery guts, keep your worries to yourself
‘Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone’
Load the smiley emoticon, the rictus grin for all to see

No doubt that is just exactly what some do, immersed in  a
swamp of others who are on a downer, we few feel the need to
buck the trend.
But it isn’t fair – why must we feel obliged to don the mantle
of spirit raiser? Are we not allowed to be ourself as well?

Is there a kind of collective guilt? Are society’s woes somehow
all our fault? Why must we show resilience while our fellows crumple?
Can we not equally share in this overwhelming angst
Suffer or rejoice under this communal cloud of foreboding

And if we seek the freedom to complain or soldier on stoically
are we then seen as unsympathetic – callously heartless they may say?
But if this mood has somehow become the temper of our time
Perhaps we must simply be swept along by this tsunami of unease

Yet hold on a mo, why not try to free ourselves from the zeitgeist?
Soar above the clouds of melancholy and despair, and even from
our own compulsion to disown all such hopelessness
Thus liberated, we may face life with equanimity

Ken Fisher