Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T LY M O N T A N A • W I N T E R 2 0 2 1 54 T HE POET W.H. AUDEN CALLED THE TWENTIETH CENTURY THE "AGE OF ANXIETY." But Auden was lucky enough (let me reiterate: lucky) to die in 1973, long before the internet, social media, the threat of identity theft, cy- berterrorism, murder hornets, the eradication of the bees, glacial melt, antibiotic-resistant germs, trans fats, ISIS, and Montana's exorbitant property taxes. Mr. Auden went blissfully into the afterlife, ignorant of all the things that he should have spent his last few hours dreading. But not me! I have anxiety to spare, and I set a little time aside every day to be nervous about each and every one of those things in turn, furrowing my brow and intoning worried-sounding mum- bles into my morning coffee. Maybe you're the same way. Because I know I'm not alone—according to a 2013 study, Americans spend $1 billion on self-help books and audiobooks every year. Since 2015 some 2,500 meditation and mindfulness apps have been launched, and in 2019 (before Covid gave us another reason to be anxious) the top ten of those apps brought in more than $150 million. Americans are anxious, and there are plenty of people out there willing to try to make you feel better, for a buck or two. Many of the apps, self-help books and videos, and so on, make promises that sound good but can't be quantified, like saying that you will be "10% happier" if you stick with their program. But a cynic like me asks, "how can that be measured?" and may- be even, "how do you define happiness?" Because with all the sound and fury around the business of hap- piness, it's easy enough to start wondering if "happy" is just a word that greeting card companies invented to put before "birthday." Even so, I'm often told I should try new things, and in truth, I recognize in myself a propensity for curmudgeonly behavior. So maybe I ought to attempt something I wouldn't ordinarily try— like meditation. After all, who couldn't use 10% more happiness? In all honesty, it's a goal I've pursued before, although maybe a little half-heartedly. I tend to think When those Tibetan monks do it, they look pretty peaceful, plus those orange things look comfortable, and then buy a self-help meditation manual with a title like "Mindfulness and YOU" or "How to Tame the Tiger of Your Mind." Then I get to where the text begins to extoll the virtues of only thinking about the present moment and an innate skepticism creeps in. Isn't that one of the gifts that separate us from the animals: our ability to think simultaneously of the past, present and future? Could humanity have built the pyramids, written War and Peace, or invented "Candy Crush" while fixated solely on what was happening to them in the short moment? And it might be worth pointing out that I might have an anti-meditation bias, may even be a little bit addicted to my anx- iety, much as someone a little more sane might nurse a hobby or project. Well, maybe enough is enough. Maybe it's time to at least try meditation. There's no more fitting place to try than the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas, Montana's own Tibetan Buddhist botanical SEARCHING FOR IN MONTANA by JOSEPH SHELTON RENEE CARLSON mindfulness

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