Why We’re Anxious Right Now
In the wake of a recent election, we’ve chosen leaders who must stand with us through one of the most difficult periods in human history. Even with faith in new leadership, anxiety is understandable. We sense that consequences are coming—especially in the United States—and a brief look at our history can make us want to pull the covers over our heads and wail.
Introducing “Anxiety Soup” (and Who It’s For)
As an elder on the planet, I won’t stay silent about ways to steady ourselves through emotional, psychological, ideological, and financial instability. My offering is a medicine I take myself: Anxiety Soup.
It’s eclectic, ever-expanding, and already within reach. It assumes you’re approaching in your right mind—no numbing with alcohol or drugs, no picking fights—and that you consider yourself fundamentally free. With that spirit, let’s gather the ingredients.
Ingredient #1: Dance (Move Your Body, Move Your Mood)
For me, right now, dance edges out sitting meditation. When the news makes it hard to sit still, movement becomes medicine. I put on Quincy Jones’s Back on the Block—a masterclass in American music history that also gets me sweating on the exercise bike. I’ll rotate in Tina Turner’s Twenty-Four Seven, Deep Forest’s rainforest voices, and almost anything by Oliver Mtukudzi.
You’ll make your own playlist. Use it—especially in the morning. An hour of moving medicine helps you meet troubling headlines with a clearer, more detached mind.
Ingredient #2: Meditation (A Taste of Eternity)
In other seasons, this would be ingredient number one. In my experience, meditation helps everything. I began as a child and learned formal practice in my thirties. It has saved my life.
Any quiet corner will do—house, car, even a motel room. Sit, breathe, and let yourself taste eternity—the sense that we’ve always existed in some form and will continue in a vast, likely closed, universe. From that perspective, fear loosens. Catastrophes may come, but who dies ultimately? No one. Bodies pass; being remains. With that reminder, we can relax into what is.
Ingredient #3: Actual Soup (Cook Your Calm)
While reading my financial planner’s report—grim except for one stock that went up: Campbell’s Soup—I remembered another antidote: soup you make yourself.
Soup is forgiving. Clear the crisper: tired lettuces, shriveled tomatoes, stubborn potatoes, wrinkled mushrooms, rutabagas, turnips, dried beans—nearly anything fresh or whole will do. (Skip the shoes.) Choose your biggest pot and chop—an hour of slicing heads of garlic and halving roots can release tension you didn’t know you had. Add plenty of onion and garlic for strength; let tears fall into the pot if they come—you’re grieving for your country.
Cook with music or in silence, thanking the vegetables for their sacrifice. Serve in big earthy bowls. Add brown rice or quinoa if you have it, a little nutritional yeast for nerves, and share with someone you love—ideally by a warm fire.
Ingredient #4: Snuggling (Free, Human-Scale Comfort)
Snuggling is the most generous ingredient: it’s free, fun, and pairs well with old movies, pizza, big novels, or audiobooks. Pets can be perfect companions (weight and heat permitting). In my experience, a human is often best—someone who loves a fluffy bed, lamp or candle glow, the sound of rain, who smiles when you say, “I think it will snow.”
Snuggling invites drowsing, snoozing, hugging, tangled limbs, shared breath, and the deep peace of happy snoring.
A Generational Wisdom: Making Good from Whatever We Have
Here’s my recipe for Anxiety Soup. May we remain hardy, outliving our tormentors as my grandmother did—she lived to 125. Part of her recipe was never covering the pulse at her throat, even in winter—a declaration of fearless aliveness.
In one of the darkest periods of our republic—when people were owned by those they saw daily, rather than faceless corporations—she proved that a nourishing Anxiety Soup can indeed be made from anything.
