Wilson - First, we make the beast beautiful: a New Journey Through Anxiety

The first time I met His Holiness The Dalai Lama, I was invited to ask him one question. He tends to go on and on, his people told me. So one question only.

Of course I fretted. One question.

I was interviewing His Holiness for a magazine column I wrote in which I explored ways to have a better life. The column was one of my smarter orchestrations. Anxiety-related illness had planted me in a spot such that I was too sick to hold down a normal job, too broke to get the healing treatments I needed. So I confected a gig where I tested different ways to heal myself. Two birds, one stone.

I deliberated for days. How would I reduce things to The question that would provide a salve to all us Westerners seeking a more meaningful path through the fuggy, constipated, heart-sinky angst of life? The choice left my head spinning and chattering. What is it exactly that we need to know? Are we here to evolve into higher beings? Why are we so alone? Is there a grand scheme to our allotted eighty-five years?

When we meet a few weeks later, His Holiness kisses my hand and tosses his sandals aside. We sink into adjacent hotel room lounge chairs. I still dont have my one question. So I ask the most authentically pressing thing in that exact moment:

How do I get my mind to shut up?

You know, to stop the fretty chatter that makes us so nervous and unsettled and unable to grasp the present moment at the end of yoga classes when the instructor talks about it as though its something you can buy off the shelf.

His Holiness giggles and blows his nose on a paper napkin, shoving it down the front of his robe like my Year 4 teacher used to. Theres no use, he tells me. Silly! Impossible to achieve! If you can do it, great. If not, big waste of time.

But surely you can do it, I say.

Imean, is the Pope a Catholic; can the Dalai Lama still his mind?

Noooo. If I sit in a cave for a year on mountain, then maybe I do it. But no guarantee. He waves his hand. Anyway, I dont have time. He has better things to do, he tells me. Like teaching altruism to massive crowds around the world.

His Holiness then tells me about his recent trip to Japan, how he hits his running machine at 3am every day and all about his anger issues (yes, the Dalai Lama gets cranky!). But he says nothing further about the torturous human experience of having a fretful, frenzied mind that trips along ahead of us, just beyond our grip, driving us mad and leaving us thinking weve got it all terribly wrong. It was as if the subject bored him.

I leave feeling deflated and anxious. I didnt exactly have a pearly insight for my column. But a few days later I was defending his seemingly flaccid response to my close mate Ragni and I realized what His Holiness had done.

Hed given me a response that came with a screaming, cap-lettered subtext: YOURE OKAY AS YOU ARE!!! Hed given meand everyone else out there whose whirring thoughts keep them awake until 4am, trash-talking their poor souls into agitated despaira big, fat, red-robed hug. It was perfect.

Now, a strange thing happens when you realize that some gargantuan, all-looming issue youd been fretting over no longer needs to be fixed. You take a deep, free breath, expand a little, release your grip and get on with better things.

I suspect you might be reading these words here because youre a fretter with a mind that goes too fast, too high, too unbridled. And, like me, you might have tried everything to fix this fretting, because fretters try really, really hard at everything. They also tend to think they need fixing.

And like me you might have wondered if theres another way.

Id like to say this up front. I write these very words because Ive come to believe that you can be fretty and chattery in the head and awake at 4am and trying really hard at everything. And you can get on with having a great life.

Hey, the Dalai Lama told me so.

Actually, Ill go a bit further. Ive come to believe that the fretting itself can be the very thing that plonks you on the path to a great life.

When God was handing out The Guidebook to Life I was on the toilet. Or hanging out nappies for Mom. I was, I believe, the only person on the planet who missed out.

The first time this realization came crashing down on me I was fifteen, crouching in an Asian-style squat behind a curtain in a Canberra shopping mall waiting to see if Id won the inaugural Face of Miss Gee Bees modeling competition.

Miss Gee Bees was the teen section of the now defunct Grace Bros. department store behemoth, should you be too young to know.

A few months earlier a matronly fitting room attendant had stopped me as I flicked through her bra rack and asked if she could take a photo with her point-and-click. Yeah. Okay, I said and half-smiled, half-frowned for the camera. I got a letter two weeks later inviting me to attend the finals being held at the malls center stage. Up for grabs was a modeling contract, a Dolly magazine shoot and a bra and underwear package.

The other finalists chat and laugh as we wait for the judges announcement. Theyre glossy and cheerleader-y and all seem to be wearing the same Best & Less stilettos and black lycra micro-dresses that they keep adjusting over their bottoms, but without bending over. Because to do so would muck up their hair-sprayed quiff-fringes, a few strands combed forward over their eyes.

I hadnt got the Robert Palmer memo.

Im wearing an ankle-length white poly-cotton peasant dress with beige slouch socks and worn tan Sportsgirl brogues with splits in the soles. Its a bit Linda Kozlowski in Crocodile Dundee. A little bit Out of Africa. Id borrowed the dress from a girl at school and Id carefully hand-stitched the princess-line seams in a few centimeters to fit. Dad superglued the splits in my shoes and dried them on the hot water tank overnight.

Im feeling nervous. And, oh boy, so terribly alone.

Also, this had just happened. On my second run on the catwalk for the Saturday morning shopping crowd Id spun in front of the judges. All eyeballs were on me.