GIVE US OUR DAILY DOSE OF ANXIETY

 




“Anxiety is like a rocking chair.

It gives you something to do;

but, it doesn’t get you very far.”

Jodi Picoult

 

I know, beyond a certain point, it is futile – even senile – to worry about the future. Still, like everyone else around me, anxiety about my future doesn’t spare me. At no stage in my life – of 65 years – there was an ‘anxiety-mukt’ time… I had something to be anxious about in my teens and I have something to be anxious about in my mid-sixties… I worried abut many things while I was a bachelor, and I worry about so many things when I am a family man, now. Good health or bad health, no money or more money… let me tell you this: Life never seems free from worrying!

Am I generalizing here?

I believe, I am not.

What we ‘know’ and what we ‘do’ – are different… I am quite sure about it. For example, I know, that living in the present moment is the key to reduce - and even get free from - our anxiety. I write about it in my blogs… and strongly encourage people to trust the kind Universe… “Trust, everything will be taken care of,” is my constant advice…

And, interestingly, I offer this advice right when I am beset with anxiety about my own tomorrow – “What may happen?”

And, this, invariably, happens: My own anxiety subsides… the clouds disappear and the sky looks bright again… That help comes, that problem finds a solution, the next meal, the next EMI, the next month rent, or the next hospitalization bill – yes, everything gets taken care of…

That is the way of the Universe. She is kind and protective… Yet, she wants us not to sit on our easy-chairs and vile away our precious time rocking. Instead, she wants us to get up and do something… keep trying… Keep moving. And, in the process, if we experience anxiety, she will only help us grow through this experience…

Thus, anxiety – when helps us act more responsibly, stay wakeful and prayerful – I think, it is good…





“Give us our daily bread,” is what Lord Himself had taught us. But, what we forget is, that the daily bread doesn’t come from ‘up above’… It comes from our daily toil…

So, when you and I are thinking about our tomorrow’s bread, it means, we are wakeful and prayerful…

Till this point, thinking about our tomorrow – call it being anxious, concerned or worried – will only help us live well. But, beyond this point, as I said, it’s only futile, and even senile…

Lord, deliver us from our temptations!




 

GERALD D’CUNHA

 

Pic’s.: Pixabay

 

Video: CBS News

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