“Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry: Worry never fixes anything. ”

– Ernest Hemingway

 

I sat alone in a bar a few nights ago and scribbled in my journal, which was a present.  Another quote comes to mind, this time misappropriated to Hemingway: Write drunk, edit sober.

I don’t feel like my semi-drunk ramblings would be worth publishing, and I wouldn’t impose them upon you, dear reader.  Not verbatim, anyway.

In the journal I wrote about worry, because all the previous week I had some pretty heavy concerns darkening the doorstep of my mind. I know we all worry.  And even though I know we all worry and I know that worrying doesn’t help anything, I still do it.  I’m flawed like that.  Everyone is. Even Hemingway swallowed a shotgun barrel.

I spent the week worrying about things that were out of my control. I’m sure you can relate to this. In my case, it just worked out that I had to take care of some errands around town, and during my two days off in the week, one of them was Sunday and everything I needed to do took place at a business that closed on Sunday.

So I had one day, Monday, to get all around town, ask several favors from bank tellers and postal workers and DMV employees all before noon.  Knowing this, on the previous Wednesday, I began to worry that I would not possibly have time to accomplish everything I needed to before noon in one day.  And I began to worry about the fact that if I didn’t finish all my tasks on this one day, I would have to wait until the entire next week for another shot. And it went on.  By Thursday I was a worried wreck and I still couldn’t do anything I felt would be productive for four more days!

On Monday morning I had three alarms set, but I was out of bed before the first went off. I jumped out of bed and rushed to the area of town I needed to start in a whole hour before I had to be there.  Enough time to get breakfast and call a friend. Then I started my race.

I made it to the bar on Monday night after succeeding in completing everything I needed to.  But I still felt the weight of days of constant worry upon my shoulders.

When I was younger, twenty or twenty-one, I had a system set up where I would reward myself for overcoming the trials of my youth.  A particularly difficult test in school would earn me a milkshake. A long, grueling study session would award me a comic book. Et cetera.  Naturally, I built a habit out of this reward system.

Out of this habit, I decided to treat myself. I had worried all week for no reason, suffered through nightmare fueled slumbers and nail-chewing afternoons only to get the same results I would have gotten if I had not thought about my errands at all until Monday morning when I needed to run them. I decided to ease my pain with beer and good food.

About mid-way through the meal I realized something. I didn’t feel rewarded.  I felt heavy from my dark thoughts, I felt weighted despite my worries being absolved. And the craft beer and local delicacies seemed bland compared to the sour pit in my stomach. My reward system had failed me. In college I learned this method is called Operant Conditioning. In my case, I reenforced a behavior with a reward. I do good thing, I get good treat.  Therefore I learn to do good thing more to get more good treat.

I had conditioned myself. But now the conditioning had worn off.  I sat there confused and worried that I didn’t know myself anymore.  I didn’t know how to make myself feel better after suffering through some trial. And if I don’t know how to make myself feel better, than how am I going to meet someone who can do that, someone I can settle down with and make a family. And if I can’t find someone to settle down with, then I’ll die alone.

The worry began to compound again.  And all of the sudden I felt more comfortable. Because worry is familiar ground for me. If I am worried, it means I have something to do, something to think about and plan ahead for. See, that’s what I realized in that bar while eating my way through three Bar-B-Q beef and pork egg rolls. Hemingway had a point about worry, you don’t fix anything by thinking about it and concerning yourself with all the terrible ‘what if’s’ that come with it.  But the fact that you’re worrying, the fact that you are thinking about your life enough to have a natural physical reaction, means you are focusing on important issues. So it turns out I hadn’t worried all week for no reason.  I’d spent a lot of time that I didn’t have to thinking about what I should do and what could go wrong, but because I had worked myself up about all that running around on Monday morning, I was ready to take on anything that day had to offer me.

Still, I recognize that it’s not healthy to stress over every bit of my life, and every time I start to worry that quote from Hemingway comes to the forefront of my mind. It helps me take a breath. Savor a moment I might miss because my mind is three or four days ahead of everything else. Sleep a little easier. Write a little clearer.

We do worry for a reason. It helps us be prepared to navigate our lives, figure out what might go wrong so we can handle it if and when it does.  But that doesn’t mean that we should lose today planning for tomorrow.  That’s what I understand Hemingway to have meant. Fix what you can when you come to it, and don’t fret over what you can’t fix or can’t fix yet.  I spent a lot of days worrying about what I would do on just one. That doesn’t even out in my book. Not at all.

Take care of yourself, reader.