Instinctually Yours, Naturally

Instinct:  An inborn tendency to behave in a way characteristic of a species; natural, unacquired mode of response to stimuli.


I choose to continue speaking on the subject of worry.  I suppose I could choose to talk at length and in depth on a subject such as happiness but that would indicate a level of maturity to which I can only aspire.  We are, after all, Problem People.


Anyway, I wonder if alcoholics worry about things more than the average bear.  As a group we sure seem to worry a lot.  That's bad enough but we seem to worry about a lot of pretty minor stuff.  I'm guessing that there are other people who worry as much (or more!?) without turning to drink but we have it down pretty good.  We know what we're doing when we worry about things.  


It makes me think of the relationship between the mind and the gut.  I mean, all of our emotions, as I understand the concept, are installed as kind of a buffer zone between being alive and getting killed, in the original sense.  You know, see a saber-toothed tiger: get scared, run away or pick up a good chucking rock, that kind of thing.  I can't just ignore them; the emotions, that is, not the tigers which are extinct and eminently ignorable.  The emotions are original equipment and once installed it's not possible to remove them.  I need to pay attention to them when they come up instead of pretending they're not there.  You know, act like an ass in front of a lot of people at work in a near black out, then act the next day as if nothing unusual had happened the night before along the lines of break-dancing on the buffet table.


"Why do I have shrimp cocktail sauce all over my clothes?" we think, the next morning.  "Uh-oh.  I better not bring this up at work."