Michael Harding: Best cure for stress is to give up trying to relax

‘There I was, paying €60 an hour to lie naked on an ironing board with my face in a hole’

The Air Canada flight from London to Montreal goes over my garden at 3.30pm. The flight from Venice to New York and the flight from Amsterdam to Seattle also cross above the rushes, all coming over Sliabh an Iarainn, and then over the lake and then over the roof of our house. But at 34,000 feet the magpies would hardly know that the planes were thundering above or that there were hundreds of people up there, stressed and anxious about their futures, trying to drink tea or just close their eyes and relax as the air stewards push trollies up and down the aisles.

Of course I’m guessing that they’re stressed. I think most people in aeroplanes get a bit stressed. And it’s almost calming to look up and see them passing overhead as I stand with my feet on the ground. Flights from Birmingham to New York, from Amsterdam to Los Angeles, from London to Vancouver, all slipping across the Leitrim sky carrying tens of thousands of worried humans from one continent to another.

Nothing more than felines

I had a dog once who helped me deal with stress. I would walk him up the hills on a leash, because if he was free he might eat the sheep. And I have had lots of cats as pets, and they are powerful therapists.

Sometimes I go to Dublin on the train instead of in the car in order to avoid stress. And when I’m at the leisure centre I often look longingly at the massage treatments on offer and wonder if that might help me relax.

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When I was on the road last spring giving readings from my book in various arts centres I got extremely stressed. I ended up on a massage table with my face stuck in the hole looking down at the ground. Someone called Linda was rubbing my back and I was thinking that the music was too inane, and the towels were irritating the back of my legs, and her hands were too cold. There I was, paying €60 an hour to lie naked on an ironing board with my face in a hole, but I was stressed, and I couldn’t say I was stressed because that would seem silly so I got more stressed trying to hide the fact that I was stressed.

Which made me angry. And it’s not easy being angry when you’re trying to pretend you’re relaxed and there’s a girl called Linda with both her hands kneading the muscles of your lower back.

I’ve tried meditation, contemplation, acupuncture, tai chi, psychotherapy and swimming, but I’m still stressed. And last week it dawned on me: maybe I should just accept reality. I’m a stressed animal and it’s not going to change.

Bridge over troubled water

So that morning I walked up the hills and I leaned over the bridge and listened to the waterfall below, and then headed off up a looping narrow path towards the curlews and the small hawks and the windmills, with the lake in view, all the while accepting that I’m a naturally stressed out person. Which was weird, because at the end of the walk, I was totally relaxed.

When I got home I sat in the garden and listened for the aircraft. I have an app on my phone that can identify planes in the air and I have become familiar with various international flight paths that cross Leitrim. The Dusseldorf to Washington flight passes over at 10am. The New York to London passes over at 12 noon. “My garden is such a cosmopolitan place to live,” I thought to myself.

Each hour there is a different craft, 40,000 feet above, and I am never completely alone whenever I think of the people up there who are using the little bathroom, or sleeping in their seats or savouring the paninis that the air stewards provide, or just sipping gin. People with anxieties. And age issues. All reminding themselves where their bags are overhead, and checking their breast pockets for passports, and wondering about their destination, their arrival, or whether or not the plane will be on time.

Maybe some of them are going on holidays, or on business, or to funerals. Maybe some are already thinking about where they will get sex in New York or Seattle or Montreal. Maybe there are old people up there, hoping that they won’t have too far to walk to the baggage collection area. All up there above the clouds, as I stand under the trees and look up into the sky.