Looking out my Backdoor: Be happy, don't worry

Yes, I know, the song says “don’t worry, be happy” and I reversed the order. Which comes first, chicken or egg, or does it matter and who cares?

What I noticed is that when I am happy, I tend not to worry. However, it is within the realm of possibilities that worry is a vastly underrated activity.

Consider this. Almost without fail, the things I worry about never come to fruition. When bad things happen, it invariably is something of which I never thought to worry.

If worry prevents bad things from happening, isn’t worry a good thing? Shouldn’t I then worry more?

Logically, this is an excellent argument for worriers to worry more. If enough worriers worried about enough dire disasters, perhaps the world would be without disaster and everyone would/could be happy.

Oh, dear. Would that eventually create and equal and opposite reaction of bad things happening because people no longer bothered to worry thus creating an inevitable backlash of no happiness? I worry about these kind of things. Somebody has to do it.

I have a temporary neighbor, renting a casa around the corner and across the way, who worries about really strange and dire things. I’ll bet anything that you didn’t know there is a mad scientist twirling dials and pushing buttons on a strange device hidden somewhere in the Arctic, controlling nature disasters all over the globe — things such as volcanoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, blizzards and hurricanes. Yep. He swears it is so.

Not only that, but this man claims that jet flight vapor trails are purposely used to spread poison chemicals meant to kill us all off, to what motive, he didn’t say. And our drinking water is laced with sedatives to keep us a mild and compliant people. Yep. Obviously the sedatives don’t work.

This sweet man tracks sightings of Big Foot and gets his information from that most impeccable of sources, Face Book. (Is that one word or two?) Elvis lives.

I’m glad this man worries about such phenomena because I would never think to worry over such. I worry that iguanas will find a way into my screen-fence and eat my lettuce, a very selfish worry, indeed.

Not that I am worry free or do not know how to worry. At one time in my life, I assure you, I was a world class worry-wart. I worried about everything. I worried for you. I worried for me. I worried for the starving dog in the alley.

I worried you wouldn’t like me. I wrote scripts in my head. If I said this, then you said that, and then I replied thus and such, and you would then say the other, and on and on and on. None of these imaginary conversations ever happened but they occupied my mind untold hours, long into dark nights.

I worried about things over which I had no control. I worried about stuff which was none of my business. I worried imaginary scenes which would bring me to tears at the sheer tragedy. I must have enjoyed it, because I worried like that for years.

One day a light bulb switched on letting me see that my worry, script writing, and tears, were about futile attempts to control outcomes of interactions over which I had no control. It seems so simple now. I fired myself from the job at which I had hired myself.

I would like to tell you my worry obsession went away overnight. No, I had to catch myself at it over and over for years. For one thing, I had felt like I was all alone in life. I did not share my fears and did not learn to laugh at myself for a long time.

Today, I am surrounded by people who accept that life is hard, tough things happen, trouble comes. They don’t worry about it. They deal with it. They surround themselves with friends who help. And we laugh a lot.

Bobby McFerrin says it best, “In every life we have some trouble. But when you worry, you make it double.” I will add that each time you share a trouble, you cut it in half.

So let me tell you about what happened to me when … .

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Sondra Ashton grew up in Harlem but spent most of her adult life out of state. She returned to see the Hi-Line with a perspective of delight. After several years back in Harlem, Ashton is seeking new experiences in Etzatlan, Mexico. Once a Montanan, always. Read Ashton’s essays and other work at montanatumbleweed.blogspot.com. Email [email protected].