Blue Heron Visions: Chapter 10: The Worry-o-meter

This manuscript is both a memoir of sorts and a work of fiction. The stories and events included are based on my life experiences and memories but I have changed names, details, event sequences, and outcomes throughout the work.

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Chapter 10: The Worry-o-meter

As Christmas crept ever closer, Elizabeth had just finished creating some cards for her kidlets and assembling two packages of gifts to give to her granddaughter, whose birthday was two days after Christmas. This year she had managed to get everything together in plenty of time for the parcel to arrive in time for the holiday. She put on the many layers it took to go outside during the cold December days and went to the post office. Of course, there was a line, and she did her best to wait patiently. (Patience was a virtue that was in short supply in Elizabeth's life.) Finally, she arrived at the front of line and was served. She paid the fees and received the tracking number for the package.

Later that evening, Elizabeth began what would be a daily exercise of checking on the transport of her precious package. The clerk had said the package would arrive in five to seven days. But Elizabeth had her doubts since there had been other years that the annual package took much longer. As the days went by, Elizabeth fretted and fumed more and more. The tracking information was not being updated, and she had no way of knowing where the package was and when it would actually be delivered.

Since this obsession with package delivery was a regular occurrence, Vincent asked her yet again why she got so worried about the situation. "After all, there is nothing you can do to change it," Vincent would remind her. Elizabeth would bristle inside, knowing he was right but somehow feeling that her worrying increased the odds that the package would arrive on time, certainly a thought that lacked credibility.

This idea that worrying protected her or kept "bad" things from happening was one of Elizabeth's mental challenges. She would try not to worry but it seemed like the whole process was built into her very being. As she considered that idea, she knew, of course, that made no sense. Her "very Being" would never be worried for there would never be any reason for her "very Being" to worry in a Reality that was created perfect and unfolded perfectly. Nevertheless, worry ended up being her best friend or her worst enemy.

Elizabeth remembered one day when she decided to investigate the word worry to find out what it meant and from where the definition had come. She discovered that the word came from an Old English word that meant to strangle and an Old Norse word that meant rope. Elizabeth had immediately pictured a hangman's noose as she thought, "How appropriate." After all, if someone wanted to strangle or choke the joy, life, and peace out of a situation, worry was the way to accomplish that task, which Elizabeth knew from numerous personal experiences.

Elizabeth found that she worried almost constantly about almost everything, including the most banal situations, as in the case of on-time postal delivery. She noticed that words like worried or concerned often made their way in her daily conversations, in her writing, and, most importantly, in her thinking. Elizabeth was sure that if someone looked up the word “worrywart” in an illustrated dictionary, a sketch of her face would be found there.

Worrying the way she did exasperated Vincent. She had so many concerns about daily life and rules about how things should work. One time (and this had happened more than once in their ten years together), Elizabeth opened a jar of jam (and you could substitute mustard, applesauce, salsa for the word jam) and was extremely concerned because the lid did not pop exactly as she thought it should. Instantly, she heard her mother telling a story about botulism that had occurred in some home-canned string beans, and somehow Elizabeth would connect her situation with the story her mother had told her all those years ago. Elizabeth would grow more and more uneasy and worried and then she would approach Vincent to get some peace of mind. Vincent never understood her concern and eventually began to tell her, "You are going to die," which didn't bring Elizabeth any measure of comfort or peace. So she would do a search on the Internet to see if the food that was now suspect had been recalled. Remembering this series of events, Elizabeth realized her worrying was out of proportion with the actual situation.

For Elizabeth, worry was just a way of life. She didn't want to have it be that way but she felt powerless to change. She tried to analyze why she worried so much. She understood that she felt worry gave her some measure of control. She believed that the act of worrying somehow guarded her against the very thing she was worrying about. And she knew she was not alone in that idea. She had once watched a television interview with Michael J. Fox and his wife in which his wife had mentioned her own worry problem. She said that she used to worry about Michael and their children getting sick from all sorts of diseases. But she had never been concerned about Parkinson's disease, the illness from which Michael was afflicted. Elizabeth often thought about what his wife had said, and some part of her would whisper, "See, worrying works; if you can just worry about all possibilities, you will be protected from them." But even Elizabeth could see how ridiculous that premise was.

So Elizabeth took steps to change. One idea she had read about in Oprah's magazine said to look at a situation about which you are worried and develop it to its most dramatic and extreme end. Of course, most situations about which Elizabeth worried had death as the final result and most often a painful death, full of suffering. Although she tried this method, she didn't find that it helped much. She did discover, however, that she was more afraid of pain and suffering than she was of death.

Another method she had tried was a kind of hybrid of the previous idea. She would allow the worry to play out in her mind to its final result. Then, she would try to take an I-don't-care attitude. "The lid didn't pop right. Could there be botulism in a jar of jam? Oh well, I guess I am going to die." Sometimes this method actually helped her to let go of the worry. The only difficulty with this method is that she had to, at times, keep repeating the process. She had tried adding one more phrase: "I don't care any more." And that last phrase was never really the truth, which was glaringly obvious.

Elizabeth had become more aware that her worries were always about future happenings, not about what was necessarily occurring in the present moment. Of course, when she opened the jar and thought about botulism, that was happening in the now; but all the thoughts that came rushing in about what she would experience if she had botulism were a future projection. Her thoughts were creating a dire prediction of a dramatic, undesirable, even horrific future.

Elizabeth also noticed that she had a sort of scale or meter to measure her worrying. She called it the worry-o-meter. Those situations on which she could apply her technique successfully were low on the worry-o-meter. But those with which she had to repeat and repeat her technique or those that filled her heart and mind with paralyzing fear, those measured high on the worry-o-meter.

Elizabeth knew that at some level there was a part of herself that never worried. She also knew that all her worrying was only about trying to control anything and everything that could possibly cause her distress, unhappiness, discomfort, or that simply did not fit into what she think should be happening in her life at any given moment. She realized that she could have more peace if she could just accept that life was unfolding exactly as it should. For her, though, acceptance looked more like resignation. She struggled with the idea that letting go of her worry and her need to control what life brought her way somehow meant she would be giving up the dreams or wishes or ambitions she had for her life. This struggle made her life feel like she was engaged in a no-win battle at times just as much as worry made her life feel like hell, if by hell one meant a place of torture and torment. And both situations were in her control. That was the truth some part of her failed to realize. The very control she was seeking was the ability to control her mind and her thoughts! The irony was not lost on her.

Elizabeth often wondered if struggle and worry kept magic from occurring. Or perhaps it kept her from "seeing" it or perceiving the experiences when they happened. After all, if she sometimes could see pieces of magic in her life, wasn't it possible that magic was all around her and she just wasn't aware of it? She contemplated that question for a few moments. What would it mean if the magic was already part of her life, or even the very river in which her life moved? What if she only saw "pieces of magic" at certain times because those were the times when she let go, ceased struggling, and simply flowed with what was happening, not worrying about future results and outcomes?

Elizabeth had grown weary of worry's energy-sapping grip. She wanted to stop feeling like she was strangling the magic from her daily life with her own hands. She desired to know the freedom she believed she could have if she learned to embrace what arrived in her life each day. She longed for peace of mind. Now, all she had to do was figure how to do that.

Elizabeth's thoughts returned to the parcel. She sighed as she checked one last time to see if she could actually tell where the parcel was. Amazingly, she discovered that the parcel had finally arrived at the post office in her children's home town. "What a relief!" she thought. That was one worry that she could lay to rest. Now it was time to face her day.