I was all set to share some deep thoughts stemming from reflections on aging (we grow slowly in my family - emotionally speaking), but thought that I would add my 2 cents on the 'forget about it' topic of today.
I am surrounded by people, old, young, well-off, poor, who are inundated with anxieties, and often overcome by them. Now I understand that things can worry, there are pressures and uncertainties about how we will deal with them, there are fears...all of these are legitimate. But to allow these anxieties to take control of one's life - to affect how one sleeps, or reduce one's ability to find pleasure in the day to day miracles of life....again, I know that it is hard to fight - but fight you must!
I guess from an evolutionary perspective, anxiety makes sense - that tiger prowling shouldn't provoke a sense of peace and tranquility - we need to be aware of the real threats in our lives and react to them. But prowling tigers today are a very rare occurrence for most of us. Instead, most of us are made anxious by things of our past - mistakes, missed opportunities, what if's, or by things in our future over which we have absolutely no control - will that meteor hit us? will the entire financial system of the world collapse? will my favorite actor get an oscar? These are the enemies of our own peace of mind...and they are powerful.
I am not advocating being insensitive or blind to problems, but we all need to find the balance between the worry we need to hold on to in order to move forward, and the buzzing mosquitoes of problems that should be swatted away as unnecessary irritants.
We need to sleep, we need to laugh, we need to love - the anxieties that get in the way of doing these things are not our friends - they are viruses that undermine our ability to think, live and prosper.
Let me finish with a story I read - about a man who would come home from work every day and reach over to touch his shrub, then go inside. In the morning he would touch the shrub again before going off to work. One day his neighbor asked him what he was doing. The man explained that the shrub was his trouble bush - each night he would leave the day's troubles with the bush to avoid them impacting on his family life and sleep, and each morning he would pick them up again. The thing was - he told his neighbor - every time he gathered them in the morning, it seemed they had all but disappeared.
Here's wishing you all a thriving trouble bush - leave them outside and let them go their way.
Cheers
comments