The Great Worrier

When my children were young, a frequent conversation between them, overheard by me, ran like this:

Daughter I  : What is the small difference between Napoleon, the Great and our

                     Mom?      

Daughter II : Napoleon and Mom? Why, Napoleon was a world-conqueror and   

                     Mom is Mom!

Daughter I : That is a big difference. What is the small difference?

Daughter II : Small difference?

Daughter I :  Napoleon was a great warrior and Mom is a great worrier!

The wife used to worry a lot over small things. If the school-bus would be late in any morning, she would prod me to drop them at their school; if it would be late in the afternoon, she would telephone to me and pester me to go to the school to bring them, worrying all the while that the bus would have broken down or would have met with an accident or the driver would have fallen ill etc..

I can’t say that I am not a worrier at all. All of us worry.

We are raised and trained to worry. Parents expect their children to worry. “It is time to stop wasting your energy and start worrying about your exam.” is frequently heard. We are not considered ‘grown up’ if we don’t start worrying and till we perfect this art. “You’d better start worrying about your future.”, we are advised when we are in teens. We become a ‘responsible adult’ only when we start worrying!

‘What if…?’ is the question that constantly crops up in our mind and tortures us. What if my daughter/son does not do well in the Board Examination? What if it rains on my wedding day? What if the train reaches late and I am late for the interview? What if there is a riot in the town and my husband is stranded? What if my wife falls ill on the day of our anniversary party to which I have invited a lot of my friends?

( By the way, in Financial Management ‘ What if… ‘ is a good tool in Sensitivity Analysis for remaining prepared to face any business uncertainty. ‘What if the price of raw materials rises by say 10%?’ is a question in profitability-management.)

 If one does not worry, one is called uncaring.

It is possible to care without worrying. To be concerned is not the same thing as worrying. Concern opens up love-energy and the person becomes more alive.

There is a difference between ‘fight-or-flight’ response which is a necessary and healthy reaction of the body to immediate danger and ‘worry’ which is a psychological problem. If the imminent danger is of manageable magnitude, the body prepares to fight it; if it is enormous, the self-preservation instinct makes us to flee from the place, prompting us that discretion is better than valour. Worry is a state of anxiety, sometimes, without assessing the magnitude of the coming problem or even without knowing for sure whether problem is actually going to come.

Worry is negative imagination; it is misuse of one’s faculty of imagination. Imagination is a beautiful thing and can be better used in planning the future.

 “Worry is the interest paid on trouble before it is due.” , says William R Inge. 

A typical worrier will think about all the negative possibilities about the future and fret about a situation.Some people even worry over how many worries they have!

We brood over something which happened in the past and worry about what is going to happen in the future. We worry about the past which we cannot change and worry about the future which has not come. As Carrie Ten Boom has said, “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows; it empties today of its strength.” Let us live in the present.

Murphy’s Law teaches us that if anything can go wrong, it will. Let us be prepared in stead of worrying about anything going wrong. In this world, there is no one who does not have problems. Nothing in this world is permanent, not even our problem!

Let us not worry in advance, about any hurdle that may come on our way. Of course we should remain prepared. As it has been said, we shall cross the bridge when we come near it. The philosophy of one step at a time teaches us that it is better to take one step at a time without worrying about imagined dangers and pitfalls of the whole journey. We should concentrate on 'here and now' on that one step after the last and before the next. We should see the challenges we face as opportunities to learn and grow.  

As Swami Sukhabodhananda says, we should not worry about two things: things we can't change and things we can change. There are many things which we can't change. Then why worry about them? We have to accept them and live with them.Similarly, there are somethings which we can change. In such cases, one has to act rather than worry.

He suggests an easy way to handle worries: Put all the worries in an imaginary box which he calls the 'Friday Box'. Do not think of any worry before Friday. Every Friday go back to this Box and you will find that most of the worries and fears have been solved. Put the remaining worries in another imaginary Box which you will open on the last Friday of each month. By that time, most of the worries would have gone. Write out 20 ways to solve the remaining problems. If you are calm, most of the problems will be solved; if you creative, the remaining problems also will be solved. Any problem still remaining unsolved even after these, will make your life humble and challenging.   

So, don’t worry; be happy. If any problem comes, remember – this will pass.

DID YOU KNOW?

A 'hypochondriac' is a person who excessively worries over his/her health.

TAIL-PIECE:

Don’t worry, some of them happen.:))))))))))))

A confirmed worrier fears every time the tide goes out that it won't come in again.

2.”It is funny that when a man does not have anything on the earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married!” – Robert Frost    

  
3."90% of the things we worry about never actually happen. So I'd like everyone to do a lot  more worrying." 

4. The human body is 60% water and 40% stress! 

5. I wasted all day today worrying about yesterday that nobody will remember tomorrow! 

6. There is no need to worry about the future; by the time you reach there, it becomes past!