Anxiety is not provoked: it tries to find a justification for itself, and in order to do so seizes upon anything, the vilest pretexts, to which it clings once it has invented them. . . . [A]nxiety provokes itself, engenders itself, it is “infinite creation.”

On some level, I’ve been struggling with a sense of existential angst for a great number of years. What does it all mean? Do I even matter? And on some level, I feel like this existential dread has been a great source of anxiety for me too. That is, unless I listen to the perspective put forth by Emil Cioran.

You might recall a couple weeks ago when I highlighted The Existentialist’s Survival Guide by Gordon Marino. In the book, Marino describes Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran as “a veritable Nietzsche on steroids.” Cioran was born in what was then Austria-Hungary, and what is now modern day Romania. His work, from what I can gather, is nihilistic in nature, described as a sort of “philosophical pessimism.”

At the same time, I can’t help but agree with the little excerpt quoted above. Consider this. The way we think about success and happiness is backwards. We think that once we achieve success, we’ll be happy; rather, it’s that we must first be happy before we can be successful, because otherwise we’ll just keep pushing the happiness goalpost and never actually get there.

Our relationship with anxiety, as Emil Cioran posits, appears to be much the same. As I look at the ways my anxiety manifests itself, I recognize that I worry about everything, from my role as a parent to my ambitions as a freelancer. Instinctively, we want to pin our anxiety on some external source.

I’m anxious because I have a lot to work to do; if I didn’t have all this work, I wouldn’t be anxious. I’m anxious because I’m concerned about my child’s future; if that was secure, I wouldn’t worry. If only we could eliminate these “sources” of stress and worry, we’d be free of the tyranny of anxiety… right? Maybe not.

Instead, Emil Cioran asserts that anxiety is something that comes from within. It is not something that is “provoked” by the outside world. As an anxious person, I subconsciously seek out justification for my anxiety’s existence. I want to attribute it to something to explain why I feel the way that I do.

Even if I were to successfully “fix” whatever it is that I think is causing my anxiety, I will inevitably “find” something else that I think is causing anxiety. It’s an endless, vicious cycle, one that “engenders itself” as “infinite creation.”

While we may view this perspective as nihilistic, pessimistic, or even hopeless, maybe it doesn’t have to be. The sooner we can accept who we are — all of who we are — the sooner we can work on learning how to manage our anxiety. To cope with it. To live with it and still be active, positive contributors to society. Maybe. Truth be told, thinking about all of this just makes me anxious.