Me And My Ill-Controlled Brain

"Worry is evidence of an ill-controlled brain; it is merely a stupid waste of time in unpleasantness"
Arnold Bennett


"It ain't no use putting up your umbrella till it rains"
Alice Caldwell Rice



Worry. I do it all of the time. I worry about my children, I worry about my grandchildren. There are just so many things to worry about.

I have a "little" brother, who is now about 43 years old. When he was a little boy he used to worry about everything. He would worry the minute my parents stepped out of the house; they could get run over by a bus, lightening could strike them, a hole might open up in the middle of the street and swallow them.

He worried about globle warming before it was in vogue. He worried about the rain forests. He worried that his dog might become ill from eating her own poop. My brother worried that the car might run out of gas on the freeway, he worried that an earthquake would hit while he was in school and then he worried about how he would find our parents if it did.

Now, I don't worry about those kinds of things, I just worry about the others things that I have almost no control over. I like to think I can control the things and mostly the people around me, but I know that I can't, nor would I want to. Well, I really would like to but I know I'm suppose to not want to.

When I was talking to my second daughter on the phone last night I was thanking her for being the one child that I almost never worry about. It's not that there is never anything in her life or her families lives to worry about. It's just that she does all the worrying without worrying me. How thoughtful is that? There are plenty of challenges in her life but she handles them the way I wish I could handle mine. She doesn't whine and cry about her setbacks, she simply takes care of them.

I know my other children and grandchildren have little or no idea of how much I worry about them, but I do and I probably always will.

Now, I know that there is probably nothing I can do about the things that worry me, so why do I worry? Well, knowing my brother and even my dad, I think, I come by the worry thing genetically.

But, this afternoon when one of my grandchildren gave me the tiniest thing to worry about I came to a conclusion. I am not going to be a worrier anymore. I am going to save my worrying for the important stuff like the holes that could open up in the middle of the street and swallow us up while we are driving to Taco Bell.