Troubles, I Seen Troubles

Worry:  To be troubled; to give way to mental anxiety or doubt.

I am rereading some old journals.  I've noted that a lot of my entries revolve around the fact that I'm getting SCREWED by life.  Things are bad.  Things are getting worse.  Things are never going to get better.

In all fairness these journals are generally places to release angst into the ionosphere.  I should probably spend some more time writing down all of the ridiculous blessings I have in my life but, frankly, there aren't enough hours in the day to total all of the bad stuff up.  Time's a wastin', Ma.  Plus, I do make a token effort at tonelessly, distractedly repeating, in a total rote manner,  a gratitude list when I'm in the throes of my morning Quiet Time. On the odd occasion that I can be bothered.

There seem to be three prevalent categories: a) Things that everyone worries about so it's not really a big deal that I'm worrying about them so the fact that I still worry about them today sometimes seems normal to me,  b) Total ridiculous bullshitty things that I cannot believe I worried about and I'm probably worrying about similarly bullshitty things today despite my advanced state of spiritual development, and c) things in retrospect I can say, truly say: "OK, you should have been worrying about that.  That's worrisome."

The result of all this worrying is hard to quantify.  

Clearly if I want to worry about my health or my finances or whether SuperK is about to brain me I'm in good company.  These are/can be scary things.  But to keep things in perspective, I have a friend recently diagnosed with MS who complains less about this scary development that I do about some vague aches and pains.

Clearly I need to inspect some worrisome things because they really are quite worrisome.  For instance, at one point, I ended up with two houses because I bought a house before the other house was sold.  While I could afford this temporarily I could not afford it long term, so I was worried about that.  Fair enough.  That's a real thing that had to be dealt with.  I couldn't serenely wish that away.  I'll also note that everything worked out.  I ended up with only one house although I should have kept the first house and not gotten to big for my britches with a bigger house I didn't need.

Clearly there is also some incredibly trivial bullshit in the journals that I never should have worried about in the first place.  Intellectually I knew this at the time but these trivial matters became tireless termites ceaselessly devouring the foundation of my serenity.  These matters surface from time to time today.  I am a lot better at banishing them to the basement of my disdain but from time to time one will dig in and become astonishingly hard to dislodge.