Had the strangest experience the other day—okay, maybe not THE strangest experience, but a strange experience. It was a Monday, and I was drifting on a malaise of inertia, brought on by the facts that I didn’t feel well but in a vague way; had the free-floating anxiety related to knowing that my blissful four day weekend was coming to an end; knew it was time to post on this blog but the spirit hadn’t moved me as of yet; and had tuned in to the first day of the Democratic National Convention, which already seemed to be an extension of the chaos gripping the world at large—not that this was necessarily a bad thing, depending on one’s goals. Truthfully, my day thus far had consisted of wearing a short path from the tv room to the kitchen, where I would rummage through cabinets and the refrigerator in a fruitless (no pun intended, but I don’t believe it involved any apples or oranges, etc.) effort to find something that would settle my queasiness. The problem there was that I actually had to consume the thing before I could conclude that it was not helping. Pretzels? Nope. Fiber One coffee cake bars with only 90 calories? Nope. Vanilla ice cream? Hmm…maybe.....nope. Lean Cuisine spaghetti dinner enhanced with a custom sprinkling of seasoned bread crumbs? Tasted good going down but then the bad feeling returned. Had to stop finally, as I would certainly end up being the only sick person who ever gained weight, which would make me feel even worse.

So here’s the weird thing. Having given up on chasing the feel good by eating, I was once again trying to get comfortable on the uncomfortable futon/sofa in the tv room, channel surfing between the convention, Say Yes to the Dress, a bad but perversely gripping Lifetime movie, and a Love It or List It rerun. Sigh….was this how the rest of my precious day was going to play out? In the thralls of this stupor? I started drifting off, with the drone of the television in the background becoming more distant, and, as my mind relaxed, the screen in my head beginning to project its own garble of blips of images and impressions. I suddenly could see a frame clearly, and in it I was lying on the carpeted floor of the room I was in. There was a small metal cuff around one of my wrists, and connected to it was a chain. At the end of the chain was a large, heavy anchor, lying next to me. Blimey! I sat up with a jolt. The symbolism was too clear for me to ignore, and it was not pleasant. I, as my inner screen grab illustrated so aptly, was anchored by my inertia (and—to offer a defense—my not feeling well) to watching an unsatisfying menu of television programming and generally being a slug as my life ticked away.

Scared straight, I turned off the tv, made myself get up, and started doing something—I can’t remember what it was exactly….my floor exercises consisting of stretches and calisthenics? Or maybe it was cleaning up the kitchen. Or my bills. Not sure, but the point was that I simply started moving. It has long been known in psychology that one of the proven remedies for depression is physical activity. Not that I was depressed, but you might say that the slump of inertia that we all feel at times is a relative of depression…a kind of low-grade, temporary episode of the cluster of symptoms that can be paralyzing in full-blown depression, but that we can emerge from on our own if we’re generally healthy. This is one of the fascinating things that I’ve observed in my ongoing study of life and how it works—there is a momentum that is created when we get moving. Have you ever noticed this? To get the momentum going, we sometimes have to exert what feels like unnatural and tremendous effort in the beginning—particularly when we’d rather just be a bump on a log. But then once we get going, it doesn’t feel like we’re having to push ourselves so much, because the momentum takes over—almost as if the same law that is recognized in physics also governs the psychological world.

And so I—a fervent advocate of being in a society that seems frantic with activity at times—have to give doing its due.