Not On My Watch!

Only when your consciousness is totally focused on the moment you are in can you receive whatever gift, lesson, or delight that moment has to offer.
~Barbara De Angelis

It was snowing and the mercury had dropped to a bone chilling -25C. It was still dark, but the sun was slowly rising, sucking the life out of the night. 

From this hidden rooftop I could see a small area of the compound and I felt secure because no one expected them to attack from this area: It was too isolated and too hard to scale the fence. So, I settled down and let my mind wander to warmer times of walking on the beach and just being out of the cold.

The guard house that I was in seemed to amplify the dreariness all around me; a simple 3 walled structure, insulated with frozen sandbags facing outwards towards the night, just sitting there was making me miserable.  My rifle seemed heaver, my backpack bigger, my helmet too confining.  I was hungry, cold, achingly tired, and frustrated that I was sitting all alone in this little area of the compound. I was so miserable that I was just sitting there looking for things to complain about which suited to make me even more miserable. 

The last thing I wanted was for anything to happen.  Not now, not on my watch.

I was so busy feeling sorry for myself that I at first almost missed the slow creeping attack right where everyone said it wouldn’t happen.

Everything seemed to happen all at once. In my unconscious eye, I noticed a slight movement: A deeper white gliding across the snow, a rustle of clothing on branches, an inconspicuous click of metal on metal, a sudden reflection of polished blue gun steel.

As I was slowly coming to consciousness, aware that the improbable was indeed happening. My radio crackled to life just as I was reaching for it, “Station echo, this is base over.”

“Station echo, go ahead” I replied.

“We have unconfirmed reports of enemy troops proceeding to your direction. Keep your eyes open.”  Came the cold calm voice into my earpiece.
“I see movement, just beyond…”

Before I could finish the thought, the stillness exploded into action: Flares burning, rifles popping, men shouting, sirens wailing, gas canisters smoking, people running. 

A smoke canister dissolved into thick billowing red smoke and gave birth to a troop of white clad soldiers making for the back door of the compound.

“Halt!” I shouted in unison with the trooper in station “Foxtrot”, on the next rooftop, as the intruders approached the door. They stopped as one, frozen into stillness, like being caught with their hands buried to their elbow in the cookie jar.  Then, as they remained still, suspended in time, the door burst open and a troop of our soldiers spilled out and captured them without a shot fired or a word spoken.  Within 5 minutes it was all over: the attack, the tension, the noise and the night.

That was 25 years ago, and we were in doing a mock-up exercise on our small Canadian Air Force radar station in Northern Quebec. Not the usual kind of place where you would see this kind of drama, but still necessary to prepare us all for the possibility of it actually happening in real life.

That’s the way worry and fear strikes as well: slow, inconspicuous and subtle.  It works its way into our minds and eventually into our lives often without our knowing it, and then one day we wake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat under attack from our emotions.

The only place worry exists is in our minds, yet once it has breached the gates of our consciousness, it infects our whole being often causing many more problems than we would initially realize.  Even though worry is in the mind, it often shows up outwardly in our actions and communications. We become impatient, jumpy, and crabby. We retreat into our selves, we lose sleep and we don’t communicate.  The more we worry about it, the bigger the problem seems to become, and the more real the feelings are that take over our lives.

The thing that I have discovered about stress and worry is that the more time we spend idly thinking about the negative things that are happening in our lives; the more we are prone to worry about the consequences that will occur.  If we could be more proactive and keep constant watch over what we allow to enter in, we will find that we will be less worried and much more productive.

So, even though you can’t physically see the worry that you feel, that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. But once again, we must learn to recognize it before we can act on it. 

There is a story told about Einstein that when he was 5 years old, he was given a pocket compass.  In his 5 year old mind, he wondered why the needle would always point to a certain direction.  Even though he couldn’t see what was moving the needle, he became aware that there were invisible forces moving on it.  He discovered that even though he couldn’t see something, that didn’t mean that it wasn’t there.

The same can be said for worry: When we learn to recognize that there are things acting on our minds that we physically can’t see, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t there.  There are always attackers at the gates waiting for a reason or a way to attack us. When we know the symptoms of stress and worry and how it affects us that is the only way we can actually do something about it and bock their entry.

We can sit, we can wait, we can pretend that all is well in the kingdom, but if we try to ignore it, it will breach the gate and eventually take over our lives.

This week commit to be on guard! Keep constant watch over your actions and fears and deal with them as they appear, and when you do, you will find that they will rarely keep you up at night worrying, and you’ll be happier and healthier and much more productive.