Worry Warrants Willful Woes

“Worry gives a small thing a big shadow.” ~Swedish Proverb

In the last week or so, I haven’t been my normal self. At least I haven’t been feeling that way. I have had others come up to me asking me what is wrong and oddly enough I look at them like they have bullfrogs coming out of their ears for asking such a question. Nice visual, eh??

But I’ve come to remember that it is through the eyes of others that can see in us, what we cannot see. And we actually give off signs that things aren’t going so well, even when we think that we are so good at hiding it. The truth is that we never really are that good. Some of them may be fooled, but not everyone.

So I returned to the scene of the crime, as it were, to find out what it was that caused them to ask me if I was okay. Sure enough, subtle clues about my speech and expression were the dead giveaways.

Over the last few evenings, I have not been sleeping well. If at all. Two nights worth that I can recall be awake throughout most of the hours. And I couldn’t see the forest through the trees.

At long last it had struck me. I have been filled with worry. It was consuming me, or at least my thoughts and ultimately dictating my actions. Worried about several things and many of those I have just realized are out of my control.

Worry is the thought or visual stimulation of a specific event that would have some kind of negative element to it, and so our mentality goes to battle on how in the world we can go up against it and change it so that there is no negativity.

I could worry about being kicked out of my apartment. Could happen, true. But if I visualize the fact that if I pay my rent on time and obey the rules, then the possibility of being kicked out drops to zero. So paying my rent and obeying the rules would be the prompt action that I should take. Perhaps a very meager example, but one that still makes sense.

Plenty of times though, there are certain circumstances that we worry about, and it comes up to be nothing to have been concerned or scared about in the first place. These are the cognitive distortions. We commonly take a situation in life and usually end up making a mountain out of a mole hill. Some people just are incapable of controlling their thoughts and their lives get so far out of line that it still is hard to watch them crash and burn, even though we can see it coming.

Personally speaking though, I believe that my worries are of something that are out of my control. I am not a mind reader or a fortune-teller. And I probably wouldn’t like to be one either. But it is the simple lesson of letting go.

The lesson is simple. The application of it, is not.

Everyone in the world, including myself, goes through changes in life. We really cannot truthfully say that we are in the same exact spot in life as we were five years ago, ten years ago… life moves on at its own pace, and we sometimes struggle to keep up.

I have recently become worried about certain significant changes in my own life. I began to worry whether or not I am going to be able to keep up with it. Whether or not the adaptation in life to it all will all become wonderful and good in the end. Future events, that I cannot see, become the problem. All that I have planned for the near future is almost certain to become something happy, but the thoughts of mindless minutiae have wormed their way into my brain and have set up camp. I think they’ve even started a campfire and are beginning to cook S’mores. I know that I will have lost my mental health in its entirety if I start hearing the faint sounds of campfire songs being relentlessly played over and over.

There’s nothing that I can do. Mainly because nothing has happened yet. And I am not guaranteed that they will happen. So how can I render damage control to damage that hasn’t happened yet? And who says that it will??

I finally snapped this evening, broke down and had to just take a deep breath and tell myself, “Let It Go!”. If I willfully allow all the worry to continue to spin, then life will definitely grow into some kind of monster that I will not have the capacity and/or strength to overcome.

So I am doing the best that I can to relax this evening. Whatever happens is going to happen. And I’ll cross that bridge, once I get to it. If that bridge even exists.