Remember Alfred E. Neuman from MAD Magazine? Heck, maybe you still read the rag that taught Roger Ebert how to be a movie critic (according to Ebert). My siblings and I used to have a blast reading MAD and sometimes making up our own mini-skits loosely based on something we read. That was around 1963 and MAD had already been in publication for nine years.
I don't know how or when I became a subscriber to Alfred E. Neuman's famous philosophy: "What, me worry?" The implication in Neuman's case was that he was too simple-minded to worry. Clearly, anyone with "a lick o' sense" would realize that the world is a horrible place and we need to be very afraid, every day in every way.
And so it follows that if we need to be afraid we also need to worry about all those things we are afraid of: everything from global warming, fluoridation of the water supply (I watched "Dr. Strangelove" again the other night), terrorists and burglars, to what might happen if we don't get that raise, or worse, what might happen if we get laid off, or lose all the money in our 401K. Then there are our children to worry about, and our significant others, or our lack of children and significant others. One of the Monty Python crew sings about being "worried about the baggage retrieval system at Heathrow" Airport.
Last week my daughter, my grandson and I were in the car when I heard Austin pipe up from the back seat, "Nanny, did you know there's going to be a flash flood? I heard it on the news." My daughter sort of laughed it off but I know my grandson, so I asked him point blank if he was worried and he said he was. I explained how his Chunns Cove neighborhood was about as safe a place from flash floods as anywhere in the county but I knew he wasn't convinced.
You see, Austin is a global worrier, a term I first heard from a previous boss who applied it to his ADHD son (Austin is also afflicted with the condition). People who are globally afraid must have very active imaginations because they worry about things like tall buildings falling down, events they have neither experienced nor even seen on television, and over which they have absolutely no control.
I know where Austin got it: from his mother. I once said to my teen-aged daughter, "I don't know how I got such a worried child: I never worry." She answered, "I know, that's why I have to worry for both of us."
One of the best definitions of worry I have heard is "negative goal-setting." Eckhart Tolle says that worrying is the ego's way of keeping us thinking about what might happen in the future rather than being fully present, in the Now, when everything is always perfect.
While eating my breakfast today in the RV, I happened to glance out the window and saw a chipmunk picking up some of the acorns that have bombarded me since I arrived in my friend's backyard a few weeks ago (thankfully, they have mostly stopped falling). What a cute little feller, no more than five inches long from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail. He scurried around, picked the acorn he wanted and stuffed it into his cheek. Then he stuffed another one in the other cheek. These acorns are large, about an inch long, so you can imagine what his little face looked like with two of them shoved into his little cheeks. Then he picked up another to carry with his front teeth and he ran off. A moment later he was back, minus the three acorns, and the process began again. Then another chipmunk ran onto the scene so I immediately dubbed the pair Chip and Dale after the Disney cartoon characters who used to harass Donald Duck with their nut gathering.
These two chipmunks never worry. They just do what has to be done to prepare for hard times. They never sit around thinking about what might happen if they don't pick up enough acorns. Sure, I realize they don't know any better; they don't have the capacity for thought and reason we humans have. But we would do well to take a page from their book. If there is something you can do to prevent whatever it is that worries you, do it. If it is beyond your control, don't think about it any more. Go out and pick up acorns, or rake leaves, and focus on the activity at hand, right now, in the moment. It's all there really is.
I don't know how or when I became a subscriber to Alfred E. Neuman's famous philosophy: "What, me worry?" The implication in Neuman's case was that he was too simple-minded to worry. Clearly, anyone with "a lick o' sense" would realize that the world is a horrible place and we need to be very afraid, every day in every way.
And so it follows that if we need to be afraid we also need to worry about all those things we are afraid of: everything from global warming, fluoridation of the water supply (I watched "Dr. Strangelove" again the other night), terrorists and burglars, to what might happen if we don't get that raise, or worse, what might happen if we get laid off, or lose all the money in our 401K. Then there are our children to worry about, and our significant others, or our lack of children and significant others. One of the Monty Python crew sings about being "worried about the baggage retrieval system at Heathrow" Airport.
Last week my daughter, my grandson and I were in the car when I heard Austin pipe up from the back seat, "Nanny, did you know there's going to be a flash flood? I heard it on the news." My daughter sort of laughed it off but I know my grandson, so I asked him point blank if he was worried and he said he was. I explained how his Chunns Cove neighborhood was about as safe a place from flash floods as anywhere in the county but I knew he wasn't convinced.
You see, Austin is a global worrier, a term I first heard from a previous boss who applied it to his ADHD son (Austin is also afflicted with the condition). People who are globally afraid must have very active imaginations because they worry about things like tall buildings falling down, events they have neither experienced nor even seen on television, and over which they have absolutely no control.
I know where Austin got it: from his mother. I once said to my teen-aged daughter, "I don't know how I got such a worried child: I never worry." She answered, "I know, that's why I have to worry for both of us."
One of the best definitions of worry I have heard is "negative goal-setting." Eckhart Tolle says that worrying is the ego's way of keeping us thinking about what might happen in the future rather than being fully present, in the Now, when everything is always perfect.
While eating my breakfast today in the RV, I happened to glance out the window and saw a chipmunk picking up some of the acorns that have bombarded me since I arrived in my friend's backyard a few weeks ago (thankfully, they have mostly stopped falling). What a cute little feller, no more than five inches long from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail. He scurried around, picked the acorn he wanted and stuffed it into his cheek. Then he stuffed another one in the other cheek. These acorns are large, about an inch long, so you can imagine what his little face looked like with two of them shoved into his little cheeks. Then he picked up another to carry with his front teeth and he ran off. A moment later he was back, minus the three acorns, and the process began again. Then another chipmunk ran onto the scene so I immediately dubbed the pair Chip and Dale after the Disney cartoon characters who used to harass Donald Duck with their nut gathering.
These two chipmunks never worry. They just do what has to be done to prepare for hard times. They never sit around thinking about what might happen if they don't pick up enough acorns. Sure, I realize they don't know any better; they don't have the capacity for thought and reason we humans have. But we would do well to take a page from their book. If there is something you can do to prevent whatever it is that worries you, do it. If it is beyond your control, don't think about it any more. Go out and pick up acorns, or rake leaves, and focus on the activity at hand, right now, in the moment. It's all there really is.
1 comment:
My philosophy has for some time been, "Don't sweat the small shit. And in a world none of us gets out of alive, it's all small shit."
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