It had been weeks since I'd been far from its claws. Happy, serene, enjoying life again. And precisely then, when one lets one's guard down convinced the worst chapter has been left behind, anxiety reminds you that it's still there.
A week of holiday on the Dutch coast was approaching. Dunes, bicycle, tranquillity. I was getting ready to enjoy a peaceful afternoon at home — those scarce moments of solitude we value so highly in middle age — when the unexpected arrived: a delayed train would mean my wife reaching her destination well past ten at night, only to rise at dawn and face a marathon day before coming home to pack.
What needed to be done was obvious. The car would get her there in forty minutes. For me it was an hour and a half, no more.
What was interesting wasn't the decision. What was interesting was how I arrived at it.
When I told her at the platform, I wasn't calm or serene. I was irritated. With that old, recognisable anxiety that I'd thought I'd left far behind. And while the train still hadn't come, the question emerged with its usual clarity: will I be able to drive home alone without anxiety appearing? Right now, with the holiday just a day away?
It wasn't the car. It wasn't the hour and a half. It was the uncertainty. The same old "what if?", wearing different clothes.
There was only one thing I could do. Breathe, pick up the bag and walk to the car.
What followed wasn't heroic. It was a few minutes of internal conversation — the kind so many of us know too well — followed by something far better: the road, the night, and a conversation with my wife that turned the unexpected into one of the best moments of that week. No spa can give you that.
In the alternative world — the one where you stay waiting on the platform for someone else to solve the problem — what would have been waiting was very different. A night imprisoned in doubt. A holiday begun with the weight of not knowing. Because anxiety doesn't punish you with what happens, but with what might have happened if you'd jumped.
And jumping was easy this time. Easy after five years of practice, yes. But the mechanism is the same the first time as the tenth. If you jump, if you face it, you take a step toward the light. If you obey its orders, the darkness gains another inch.
So remember this rule: when anxiety tries to dictate your path, choose the opposite. Always the opposite.
That compass, in the end, is the one that points toward the new day.