If there’s one thing I know I’m qualified to give you advice about, it’s worry. I have anxiety and depression, and there were weeks and months where I was the Simone Biles of worry. The greatest. Except that I didn’t have the self-awareness to step back and take a break from it. I ended up almost drowning in self-doubt, not understanding my own mind, and finally, finally checking myself into a hospital because I was so lost. That led me to go back on medicine for the mental illness and to start regular therapy to get my head right. I still do both, and it’s put me in a much better, happier place. And I worry less.
I hope you never experience that depth of worry and anxiety. But even if you don’t have mental illness, worry can steal the joy from your days, the sleep from your nights, and the fun from all the things you love to do. How then, can you get out from under it? How can you not worry when there’s a never-ending list of things to worry about?
First, you have to find the courage to admit your worries. Then, you have to understand the nature of the thing and find physical ways to cope. And finally, you have to find mental strategies to move past it.
Why do I say it takes courage to admit your worries? Because worrying can feel like preparation; it can feel like work you’re supposed to do. “While many of us are intuitively aware that worry makes us anxious and upset, research shows that we still tend to lean on worry when facing problems in our lives. One reason for this is that we may worry as a way to feel emotionally prepared for negative outcomes.” says Sandra Llera, PhD, associate professor of psychology in the College of Liberal Arts at Towson University.
Stop and sit with that for a second. People worry about something bad because they want to be prepared for when that bad thing happens. The problem is, not only will your worry not make it any easier to endure the worst case scenario if it actually does happen, it will make all the time you spend worrying about it beforehand suck.
When I still worked at an advertising agency, I kept up with all the trade magazines. Ad Age, Adweek, etc. One day I read an article about all the awesome up-and-coming creative directors at the hot shops around the country. The article claimed that if you hadn’t made Creative Director by 30, you never would, and that you also needed some ridiculous, unicorn-like skill set to get there. These young guns could write code, write copy, design layouts, and shit mocha frappucinos. If this was true, I was good and fucked. Because not only was I already in my late 30’s and still just a senior copywriter, I couldn’t do anything other than write copy and half-ass my way through some HTML. And so I worried, and worried, and worried some more. I even tried to teach myself to code.
And you know what? I never made Creative Director, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Not only do I not have to write any more headlines about salad, I get to be the director of wiping your butt and making sure you don’t grow up to be an asshole, which is the best job I’ve ever had. All that time I spent worrying about my future in advertising couldn’t have been more wasted if it had been chugging Everclear.
What about something worse, like not being able to pay your bills, or cancer, or murder hornets? Again, worrying about any of these won’t do anyone any good. Doing something about them will. So, do what you can about the things you can do something about. Realize which things you can’t do anything about. And find something besides worrying to do with your time.
What exactly should you do with your time? I cannot overstate the value of physical activity.
It can be as easy as taking a walk or as complicated as whitewater kayaking. Simply, physical activity like walking or hiking releases chemicals in your brain and those chemicals make you feel better and worry less. Which is a great start, but an intense activity like whitewater kayaking gives you a little more. When you’re in a boat in whitewater, you simply cannot think about anything else. In the middle of the chaos, the rocks and the moving water, there’s a peace unlike any I’ve felt anywhere else. Maybe it’s because the activity is so consuming you have to focus one hundred percent on what you’re doing. It might be because I can’t worry about murder hornets when I’m worrying about not drowning. Or it might be because kayaking is just so damn fun that it overpowers everything.
Your happy place doesn’t have to be in a kayak, though. Find something that does that for you, be it yoga, running, basketball, or LARPing. Do that activity with people you trust and like being around and you can leave your worries at the proverbial put-in. (The put-in is where you get into your kayak and get onto the river.)
Meditation is another good tool to deal with worry. Forcing yourself to detach and simply observe the feelings from a distance can give you perspective and help unwind the insidious tendrils of worry wrapped around your amygdala. There are countless apps and books on how to meditate, so I’ll leave that research up to you. But it works, and it helps.
Once you’ve faced up to it, taken some steps to pull yourself out of it, what do you think about to not worry? How do you tell your brain to focus on something else? My therapist recommended Sarah Wilson’s book First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety. And there’s a lot in that book to like. In one section, Wilson talks about her path out of neuroticism and says, “You choose. You might not even know why, but you do. You commit. Then you do the work. Oh, yeah. Then you falter. And fuck up. And go back to the beginning.”
And when it comes to worry, this is dead-center, right between the eyes, fantastic advice. You have to choose another path. You have to realize the futility of worrying and give up the self-destructive security blanket.
Choose not to waste your time worrying. When you falter, and fuck up, and go back to the beginning, choose again to not waste your time worrying. In A Dish Best Served Never, I quoted Frederick Buechner who said, “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Do not be afraid.”
Being afraid is just another kind of worry, and Beuchner knew that being afraid would not make the terrible things any easier to endure. They will come and go whether your worry or not. That worry will, however, keep you from enjoying all the beautiful things the world has in store.
Somedays, despite myself, I worry for you. I worry about the effects of climate change on the world you’ll inherit. I worry about the kind of man you’ll grow up to be. I worry about all the hard things you’ll face as you grow.
But then I remind myself not to worry; it does no good. Instead, we do what we can about climate change, we teach you to be kind and generous to others, and we let you face little adversities in the hopes you develop the strength to face the big ones later.
Don’t let worry steal your joy; the world has too many beautiful things in store for you to miss.
I love you,
Dad
I originally planned to finish this series in twelve months, intending to write one entry a week for 52 weeks. But, other things came up and I didn’t have as much time as I thought I would. We moved, you started a new school, I had other projects, etc. But finally, I’m starting my last entry in September, nine months after I’d planned. Which is the perfect intro to this one.
Time is funny like that. It marches on like a metronome, indifferent to how much you wish it would slow down or speed up. It offers no do-overs, no matter how frivolously you spend it. And it gives zero fucks what you planned to accomplish in the time you had. Once that time is over, you’ll get no more. But, it also stretches out ahead of you into an unknown future, offering untold possibility and infinite choices.
Which is why I hope you both learn to make choices about how you spend your time and understand what those choices mean. Because while there’s never enough time for everything, there’s still enough time to do almost anything.