By J. H. Irwin
Author | Storyteller | Capturing Life, Memory, and Meaning
This article was inspired by a dear friend…you know who you are!
Fear and worry have a way of disguising themselves as responsibility. We tell ourselves that if we think about something long enough, examine every possibility, and prepare for every outcome, perhaps we can prevent the thing we fear from happening. But most of the time, worry is not preparation at all. It is simply suffering in advance.
There are things worth being concerned about. Life gives us plenty of them, and wisdom does not require pretending otherwise. Fear can even serve a purpose when it warns us of genuine danger and tells us to pay attention. But once we have done what we reasonably can, continuing to replay every terrible possibility accomplishes very little. It does not change tomorrow. It only steals something from today.
That may be the cruelest thing about worry. The future we fear may never happen, yet the anxiety we experience because of it is happening right now. We can lose sleep over conversations that never occur, grieve outcomes that never arrive, and spend perfectly good days preparing emotionally for disasters that exist only in our imagination. In trying to protect ourselves from future pain, we create pain in the present.
I think there is a quieter kind of wisdom in accepting that we cannot control everything that is coming. We can prepare. We can pay attention. We can make thoughtful decisions and change course when circumstances require it. But eventually we have to trust ourselves enough to believe that whatever tomorrow brings, we will meet it when it gets here.
That is not denial. It is perspective.
Peace comes when we stop demanding guarantees from a life that has never offered them. None of us knows what tomorrow will bring, but we do know that this day is here. This conversation is here. This person we love is here. This morning, this evening, this ordinary little piece of our lives is happening now.
Fear asks us to live in a future that does not yet exist. Worry asks us to suffer there.
Wisdom gently brings us home.
I wrote a companion piece to this on July 6th, together I hope they bring you stillness: Is This Something I Can Influence, or Something I’m Simply Carrying?
Words can still move the world. Read mine → https://substack.com/@jhirwin