The Snake in the Garden

The problem with anxiety — as Marcus Aurelius would acknowledge — is that, by definition, it’s irrational; in that regard, it’s not so different from the almost irresistible impulse to jump that seizes me every time I find myself on a 50th-floor balcony, or the senseless revulsion I feel on seeing a rope that I take to be a snake. Its power comes in those moments when reason has no sway over it.
-Pico Iyer
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