Imagine a field — a level one. It is empty — no fences, no tracks, no trees. Imagine this is where we position our anxieties. They go in no particular place — there is no particular place for them to go — we just fill random areas of the field with our concerns and pre-occupations. And this is where we live, mentally at least, when we are ‘anxious’ as we call it. We roam around this field, loitering in places which contain the most interest — the most ‘anxiety’. The reason we are attracted to the crowd of anxiety is simply that it is a crowd, and we think it needs explaining, interpreting — that each of its parts needs describing. And because it is a crowd it forces itself upon us in a way that an individual never would. There is a strange strength and presence about a crowd and each member, each anxiety, feeds on the confidence that being part of a crowd provides, and it is easy for us, as an individual, to feel overpowered by this crowd of anxieties.
The answer to the problem caused by these anxieties is to get rid of the field. No field means that there is nowhere to put our worrying pre-occupations — nowhere to place the anxieties. Where will they go? They don’t have to go anywhere of course. It is the way that these pre-occupations gather — in one place, in a group, in a crowd — which makes their presence so destructive. If they cannot gather like this — if they are dissipated, denied access to the support of the crowd — they become individuals, lose their strength and so become ineffective and irrelevant. Provide no mental place for these anxieties to gather, and they will become what they are — immaterial.
