Why We Worry
I guess we worry because we can’t control circumstances and we want things to turn out alright. I have often said I would worry if I didn’t have anything to worry about. We worry about our children, our loved ones in general, we worry about things at work, we worry about long distance travels, we worry about being embarrassed or humiliated. We worry. There are some things we can’t control and we worry.
We want our children to do well. We want them to avoid trouble. We want them to arrive to school and back home safely. We worry that they will pick negative friends or take up with a bad crowd. We worry that if our kids don’t do their homework, they’ll be left back in school and start to lose out on chances in their life.
There is too much that can go wrong. I guess that’s why a lot of people worry. Maybe some people don’t show it as much as others, but probably somewhere in the back of their mind, they are thinking of a loved one, or a project they hope will do well, and they are worrying.
Because we can’t live our lives in a glass bubble, and because most of us don’t want to, we have a condition called worrying. Some people turn their worry over to prayer. They pray about the operations or the long distance trips, or the deployments to Iraq. This seems to give them a sense of peace that since things are not in their hands, they are in someone’s hands. They are in God’s hands.
Some things can be controlled, and for the most part, people seek to control situations that they can. But some things are out of our hands. We can do nothing but hope, pray or worry.
We worry about winning, we worry about losing, we worry about blind dates, first dates, weddings, “will I fall off of the stage when I give my speech?” We worry about things that will put us “out there” because we know we have no net to catch us if we fall. We worry about humiliating ourselves. Sometimes the worry is so intense, we won’t try. But we must try. Because only through trying will we know we can succeed, or that we can try again.
We worry for many reasons. Worry is a part of the human condition. It comes as a part of not knowing how things will turn out. We worry because we don’t know and we are hoping for the best.
