Do You Worry Too Much?

Are you like me? Do you worry too much? Do you lose sleep over matters that may seem trivial to others?

The synonyms listed in the thesaurus for worry are:

Worry (verb)- be anxious- fret- be concerned- be troubled- be agonized- lose sleep- be bothered.

Worry (noun)- concern- apprehension- anxiety- fear- care-nervousness.

During a conversation with my daughter yesterday, after listening to her list all her worries, I said to her: “You know what your problem is? You worry too much. Just relax. Let matters be.”

I stopped for a moment. I saw myself in my daughter. These were the exact words my husband used to tell me during our talks. In fact at night before I went to sleep when I asked him something about some matter that concerned me he used to say, “Switch off all your channels and go to sleep. If the problem is fixable then there is no need to worry from before. If not whatever will be will be, there is nothing you can do about it. Let go.” In the end I complied, maybe because he was there with me to share my worries.

Many are the times that I have wished I was the more practical and the less worrying type. But unfortunately my daughter is also like me. She worries way too much sometimes, even for me, especially at that very young age. I remember a few years ago when she was still a student, my husband and I were driving her somewhere when she started to tell us about her thoughts and concerns. My late husband then told her, “Can you stop worrying just for the little while that we are in the car? Just relax. Can you?”
She said, “I will try.” But then she saw a woman running to a bus and she yelled, “Run faster! She will miss it, she will miss the bus. She will miss the bus.” She kept repeating. We burst out laughing.

And now with all my concerns put aside I try to act calm and in my turn tell my kids not to worry. Come to think of it, I realize now that I have worried about things that never even happened. Sometimes situations and things take on a new dimension when looked at from a distance than when you are actually in them, living the moment. But I guess it’s also who you are, a matter of character. Isn’t it? How I wish to:

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.” Marcus Aurelius

ChK