“Don’t worry, be happy,” Bobby McFerrin’s insufferably simple ditty though remarkably inspiring seems easily impossible. Why else does worry persist like a cancer on the human experience?
The emotion of fear – real or imagined – is a natural trigger for fight or flight in the human body, but contaminates the mind with incessant worry. Fear it seems is more common than enlightenment, more common than love, even more so than the common cold, and worry is the pandemic virus.
The last few posts have explored the more prominent human fears as raised in Napoleon Hill’s classic read “Think & Grow Rich”. However, death, old age, ill health, criticism, loss of someone’s love, and poverty only tip the iceberg on fears at our disposal. Regardless of how we conjure our personal collection of anxieties, the common denominator and common conductive agent of fear is worry.
Worry – regardless of emotional triggers – anticipates the negative and preempts living life for fear of catastrophes we imagine. Sadder is when worry is projected over the life of others – such as parents separating children or loved ones from experiences that carry any shadow of risk or life-lessons that can potentially inflict pain.
In one form or another we all worry; its part of life. It encourages us to practice safe sex, buckle our seatbelts, buy insurance; resist poking the bear, or from trailing blood into the surf. It’s providence and common sense, but to avoid wading into open water due to fear and worry alone is classic paranoia.
This is not to decry worry. There are appropriate moments: when facing a doctor’s prognosis, or anticipating mankind’s destruction of our planet for instance. The emotion of fear is never trivial, but neither is it blind or binding, and worry, though a natural foreshadowing to fear, need not be hypnotic or debilitation.
After-all, what is there beyond dying young that can possibly allow us to elude old age; what is there that can overcome death beyond truly surrendering to live in the present moment; what is there that can sooth criticism beyond becoming your very best; what is there that is healthier than positive thought and uncompromising choices; what is there to gain in losing an intimate love if not learning to love ones self; what is there that eradicates poverty quicker than acquiring riches immaterial to material measurement; and, what or who is to say the answer to worry isn’t in the insufferably simple sentiment of a pop song.
Here is a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don’t worry be happy
In every life we have some trouble
When you worry you make it double
Don’t worry, be happy……
