How Can We Worry Better?
Many of us tend to lie quietly at night and think. Of all things, the first theme that comes to mind are the events that could possibly go wrong in our lives or are already wrong to begin with. The best part? We can spend hours mulling over the tiny intricacies. We go through mini spasms of panic when we think about how we’re negligent over a lifetime of events that happened to/for us. Much like the Internet, we deem information — a crapload of information — at our instantaneous disposal as a good thing. However, instant accessibility to our past leaves us oddly disappointed, yet we still endlessly crave for more.
Suddenly, we’re overwhelmed with remorse of much of all the things we did, and more for the ones that we didn’t.
It is mysterious and tantalizing how we gravitate towards the least pressing problems, the ones which we have the least control over. We think about our existence in the universe, whether we still persist when we die, and if the people we love really feel the same way we feel about them. We think about that one time we extended our legs to stretch a little, only to find out that we have accidentally tripped a stranger and wonder if she is okay. We think about that deepest darkest secret we shared with our best friend and if our best friend have shared that secret with his spouse. Somewhere between 5–10 minutes of random scenes appearing in our minds, the activity magically morphs into worrying. Often, we assume that worrying is passive. It runs in the background. It is something that our minds do when it is trapped and helpless. The truth is — worrying is active. We worry to avoid taking a direct action that would be difficult, inconvenient or boring. We worry about our financial situation. We worry about our upcoming workout.
We worry about asking someone something as simple as “What is your name?” which we magically forgotten despite them telling us a minute ago.
As human beings, we are talented in obsessing over our mistakes and imagining the worst-case scenarios. We’re so talented that sometimes the worry becomes the bigger problem than the actual problem itself. We’re constantly anticipating disasters that are highly unlikely to happen. Someone lurking in the closet? Check the closet! Being replaced by a robot at work? Develop creative skills! An imminent zombie takeover? Convert all your cash into gold bars and negotiate your life with it! Really..? Can you hear me shaking my head?
Our constant act of worrying is distracting us from the fact that disasters that do befall us are usually slow, incremental ones that appear abstract and faraway until they unexpectedly blindside us like ninjas disguised as heart diseases and financial crises.
Think about the times when fear is a low neurological priority. Think about the times when fear interferes with our reaction time. Think about the time when our minds go blank and our body reacts naturally in impulse. The time when we caught the ball hurled to us? The time when we gave an impromptu speech? The time when we were in The Zone. Our minds are not designed to simply resign to fate or destiny. We can break the clammy paralysis of worry; if we want to. Worry only steps into the picture when we have the intention to worry. Yes, fear and remorse are real. But the actual danger is incidental.
It is only when we focus on the worrisome feeling that it manifests itself in different ways.
Perhaps one of the main conditions we require to thrive and evolve is to be in a constant moderate threat of death. We worry, but we don’t worry too much. We are on high alert, but not all the time. We drift between the moments when we’re in a hot tub with a glass of martini and the moments when we are grinding for the championship game. We can’t simply live in the moment. We live in time as prisoners of memory and imagination. It is in these moments when we become briefly conscious of what we actually are. Sometimes we’re the actors in a movie, and other times we are watching our own movie. Sometimes we’re the lyrics and the melody, which is what I think gives life its beauty.
