Worrying has always been something that I’ve had an aversion towards. An endemic annoyance that keeps you awake at night, worrying prevents you from enjoying the better parts of life itself. Yet, it is interesting because everyone has their own threshold when it comes to this act. For some, they can worry over just about everything – whether it will rain, or about how bad traffic will be. While others it seems never worry about anything, letting each day unfold as it may. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle of this continuum.
I’ve always tried not to be fearful of the future and as a result have had somewhat of a less worrisome existence. Even though I’ve had great cause to worry, I’m just not wired that way.
My wife is a child of concentration camp survivors and she grew up believing that even though their life was good, you never knew who--or what--would knock at your door. I, on the other hand, grew up with the challenges of type 1 diabetes and knew that my life expectancy was going to be much shorter. I had a mental outlook that was founded in a belief that every year I lived past forty would be a gift – so no reason to worry, right? The framework of worrying is a product of your orientation towards life and how you learn to frame your expectations. If you expect less, you will worry less. Expect more and well, you get the idea.
My kids, on the other hand, who have had blessed lives seemingly worry about everything. I suppose it’s how we view the uncertainty of our futures, based on our view of the past. What I find is that ultimately I’m worrying about the wrong stuff anyway. I’ll be worrying about where to go on vacation and then out of nowhere comes an earthquake. I’ll be worrying about my business and then global warming comes to light. You see, since you never know exactly what to worry about, it’s far simpler just not to worry at all. Dealing with challenges and calamities as they occur (rather than anticipating and fearing every possible catastrophe, major or minor) is a much preferred approach.
I believe that as a society, we truly need to worry less. We would be a far happier generation and probably complain less, too (bonus!). After all, we really are the luckiest generation ever, who probably worries the most. Go figure…