Sometimes the fear of a thing is greater than the thing itself. Someone famous probably said that once, but I like to think that I made it up. I use that statement to remind myself that sometimes the simple anticipation of something unpleasant or scary turns out to be more upsetting or frightening than the thing I anticipated in the first place. When I was a kid and had done something bad for which I knew I was going to be punished, my mother would send me upstairs to my room to wait for her to come up and mete out justice. I would sit there in dread, anticipating the moment when I could hear the creaking of the stairs and knew she was coming and I was gonna “get it.”
Now as a “grown up” myself, I can look back and think about so many occasions in which I faced something that I knew was going to be difficult or challenging, becoming nervous, anxious, and unsettled as I waited. And when the moment came and I was actually in the situation, it turned out to not to be even remotely as negative as I had anticipated. I had expended useless energy worrying about something that turned out to be next to nothing. I have begun to realize that more often than not what I make up in my head is far worse, much more dramatic, than the actual circumstance is, and so I have begun really working with myself on arresting that tendency to anticipate and brace for problems. One approach is for me to “go there” and ask myself what is the worst possible thing that could happen, what would be the consequence if the thing I was dreading actually happened. When I am willing to go there and think about the worst possible outcome in a given situation I find that even the worst likelihood is not likely to be life threatening. And I realize once again that I still waste too much time and energy worrying about things that (a) I cannot control and/or (b) aren’t going to matter six months from now or maybe even six weeks from now, or (c) some combination of (a) and (b). It really is a matter of perspective.
Right now I have a variety of things pressing me: deadlines looming on a number of important projects, a fairly high anxiety-producing matter at work this week, as well as some of the ongoing challenges of regaining my sea legs that had been swept from under me over two years ago. I have moments of uneasy restlessness, vacillating between crankiness and ill humor with occasional flashes of panic, and an overall sinking feeling. Still, when I take a deep breath and quiet my mind I remember that the deadlines and drama are all so very temporary and of little consequence in the arc of my life. This is not to say that I don’t care; my intention is to put forth effort and do the best I can to meet my obligations and to accomplish these required tasks with excellence. It is more a matter of maintaining a sense of perspective and equanimity about things as best I can, about what is worth my energy and attention and what I need to relax about. In the scheme of things, those issues about which I allow myself to get most anxious often are not the most important things in my life.
I am going to keep noodling on this concept so that I can better describe it to you; it’s one I’ve been thinking about and working my way through but have yet to be able to clearly articulate the feelings into comprehensible words. I’ll keep at it, I promise. For now I am simply grateful to be coming to these realization that as best I can I need to relax, even about the things that seem so scary. My friend calls it “facing the cannon.” I’ve faced some pretty big cannons and lived to tell the tale; it is silly for me to get all worked up anticipating the cannon and get a popgun instead. I am grateful for the perspective. It puts me in mind those famous lines from the serenity prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Right now I am in the process of developing the wisdom. God grant me those things indeed.
