Do you worry? I do, and after decades at it I can honestly say I’ve turned it into a profession. No certificate on the wall, no office hours, but I show up every day, put in the overtime, and take the job very seriously. If there is a quiet moment, I fill it. If there is a good day, I audit it to see what might go wrong tomorrow.
My mother, in her plain practical wisdom, used to tell me that ninety-nine percent of the things we worry about never happen. She meant it as comfort, as a way to put down the heavy bag. She would say it while folding laundry or stirring a pot, as if it were as obvious as the weather. For years I nodded along, but I never really heard her.
Then one day it clicked, just not the way she intended. If ninety-nine percent of worries never come true, I thought, then worrying must be working. It sounded like prevention, like a superpower hiding in plain sight. So I made a quiet, completely illogical bargain with the universe: I will worry about everything, and in return, nothing bad will be allowed to happen.
And so I worried. I worried about money before there was a bill, about health before there was a symptom, about people I love missing their flights, losing their jobs, forgetting me. I worried about the roof in hurricane season and the car on a perfectly clear road. I worried about conversations that had not happened yet and then replayed them afterward just to be thorough. It kept me busy, it kept me tired, and it gave me the strange illusion that I was in control, as if all that fretting were a wall I was building brick by brick around everyone I cared about.
The joke, of course, is that my mother was right. Almost none of it happened. The roof held, the flights landed, the people stayed. I am learning late that worry is not prevention, it is rehearsal. It does not stop life from happening, it just makes you live it twice, once in fear and once for real. I still worry, old habits are faithful that way, but now I try to thank the worry for trying to protect me and then gently set it down, and get on with the one percent that actually needs my attention.
“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” – Matthew 6:34
