Review Our Worries

We spend a lot of our lives worrying, but there’s one basic thing we almost never remember to do.【小题1】For example, one week, we might be worried about running out of money, the next of having offended a friend, and the third about being brought down by a rumour on social media. The worries go on and on, shifting unstoppably from one target to another.【小题2】

What we seldom spend time doing is pausing to compare the scale of the worry with what actually happened in the end. We are too taken up with the next worry to return for a composed review.

However, if we force ourselves to perform one, a strange discovery is likely to dawn on us. 【小题3】We almost lost our minds to worry, but we didn’t run out of money in the end, our friend wasn’t offended, and so on.【小题4】Mark Twain’s famous saying comes to mind: “I have lived through many disasters, only a few of which actually happened.”

【小题5】If we got it so wrong in the past, we’re highly likely to get it wrong now too. Of course, we’re convinced that this is really and truly the end, but such a certainty was with us on many other situations which we appear to have sailed through well enough.

Perhaps the world is not quite as awful as we assume. Perhaps most of the drama is ultimately unfolding in a place we need to explore and heal as fast as we can: our own minds.