Stop worrying, and start living.
That’s my advice for the day. If you spend every waking moment expecting a major crisis around every corner, it makes it difficult to enjoy life. I do not put much thought into what could go wrong in my daily life. I do not anticipate getting in a serious auto accident. I do not assume my fully functioning truck will suddenly leave me stranded. I do not consider that I could be mugged or worse every time I leave my house. When I am on a step ladder changing light bulbs, I do not fret about what would happen if I fell. I spend no time wringing my hands about a potential heart attack or what diseases I might get that will end my life. I do not agonize about potential house fires. I am not stressed out about potential tornadoes. I do not feel any fear about dying in a terrorist attack. Simply put, I do not invest energy worrying about what might happen to either ruin my day or my life, even though any of these things could happen at any time. There aren’t enough hours in the day to contemplate all the possibilities and live life at the same time.
It isn’t possible to have a fully fleshed-out plan for every bad thing that could happen. I do have plans for what to do if X, Y, or Z happens. I know who to call, how to get help, and how to help myself as much as possible. I am, I believe, as prepared as anyone should be to deal with any contingencies that may arise. Wasting time and energy fussing over the internet being out for ten minutes (or ten hours), or a cell phone that isn’t getting a constant perfect signal, or someone not answering there phone every time I call is just that … a waste of time and energy. It doesn’t, in the end, really make you any more prepared for a crisis. Shit happens even while shit is happening, which is why you can’t have a plan that covers everything. I don’t think it is even possible to conceive all the things that could go wrong once something big has already gone wrong.
For example: I get a flat tire on the truck and pull over to the side of the road to call for assistance, knowing I am not capable, physically, of solving the problem myself. While I am sitting and waiting for help to arrive, someone could stop under the guise of being helpful and mug or rape me. It could suddenly get foggy, and I could be killed in the middle of a 50 car pile-up. A larger truck could swerve and smash into me leaving me paralyzed. Any number of equally negative things could happen to me while I am sitting in that truck on the side of the road. The possibilities are almost endless. Should I spend any time at all worrying about what else might happen to me if I get a flat tire and have to sit in the truck and wait for help? No. All I need to know is that if I get a flat, I have to call for help. To spend any time worrying about all the other remote possibilities is futile. All I can do if one of the other possibilities becomes a reality is deal with it as it happens. If I worried about all the things that might happen to me and how many other things might happen while those things are happening, I would never get out of bed … or I would have a heart attack and die from the stress of it all.
What precipitated this rant? My mother and her bottomless pit of stress and worry about what might happen.
Somehow, even with all the crap the universe has thrown at me in life, I have managed to be happy and mostly worry free, and I get better at doing that the older I get. I used to have to remind myself not to sweat the small stuff, and now I am working on not sweating the big stuff either. That’s been going pretty well for me, and I am a happier person than I have ever been for doing so. I only wish my mom could achieve the same thing.
There’s a whole bunch more words, mostly about my mother and her constant nagging worries about things that might happen and her views on modern conveniences, but I am going to save it for later. I have too many other, more enjoyable, things to do right now than fret about my mom’s worrying. I think she’s probably worrying enough for both of us anyway.