“Rage in the age of worry
Act your age in the age of worry
And sing Worry, get out of here!”
written by John Mayer and sung by Yebba
I was a worry wart from the get-go. I reread my baby book recently (an album in which my parents recorded my first haircut and first fingernail clippings), it said, “Debbie is a worried, fretful child.” I was only nine months old. It seems I came into the world this way. When the doctor hit me on the bum, instead of crying, I began fretting. Oh no. Why are you spanking me? Why don’t you like me? You just met me.
By the age of 10, I had grown a wrinkled chasm in the middle of my forehead. “Perseverating” is what a shrink would later call it. I would chew on something for hours, and people would try to comfort me by saying, “You’re so young. What do you have to worry about?” What a ridiculous statement. This made me worry even more. If adults couldn’t see what that was a lot to worry about, then how could I trust a thing they said? I didn’t worry about just myself. If I knew you, I would be worried about you as well. If you showed me the least amount of affection, I would put your worry in my purse and go through it for you – even if you were passed-out or sleeping with another woman and try to fix it for you. No, you don’t have to ask me to do this. I do it for free.
It’s in my DNA. I come from a tribe of Worrywarts. Irish Worrywarts.
Don’t let that cute little Irish Spring accent fool you. The Irish are depressives. My grandparents on my mother’s side had a saying: “Sing before breakfast, and you’ll be crying before nightfall.” This sounds a tad negative until you go to some parts of Ireland and realize that singing at any time of the day was tempting fate. My people came from southern Ireland, Catholics, from the clan of preventative worrying. We worry ahead of time so that when something bad happens, we are not surprised. But this was a quieter time when the news was broadcast twice a day. Where the local newspaper came out once a week. In the Napanee Beaver, there used to be an at home column, where people would talk about things that happened in their personal life. Like Mr. and Mrs Brown hosted the Millers from Kingston for a nice dinner and a talk. My grandmother would write for this and write “My grandmother Debbie Kimmett visited on the weekend, and she works in the acting business even though I’ve never seen any of her work on T.V she seems to have worked up an appetite as she had two pieces of my butterscotch pie. This was a primitive version of Facebook or Twitter. But now we can feed on even local news 24 seven online and it can really cause us to believe the world is worse than it is. Now, I know what you are going to say , “The world is a mess.” It’s easy to believe that.
But if you only feed on the negative it can really amplifies what is wrong.
Changing your perspective and looking at the positive in your life is not sticking your head on the sand. It’s right sizing what is negative and agreeing that positivity also exists.
There are a lot of reasons to worry these days. Worry about the masks coming off, living post Covid, the war, the economy, and the price of fuel.
This song I have included today is sung by Yebba and is called “Alive in the Age of Worry”. The singer challenges us to look into the eyes of worry and say , “Worry, why should I care?” It may sound a bit simplistic in the light of what’s going on but worry will not prevent anything that is going to happen from happening.
I have come to realize that worrying about things in the past in insane. The past cannot be changed. And worrying about the future wastes my beautiful moments today.
Today is all we have.
If we come back to the moment and do the next right thing we get more living done today.
Sometimes doing that next right thing seems counter-intuitive in light of all that is going on but by getting active and going for a walk, singing a song, calling a friend, doing the dishes, daring to be happy you put your fears in balance. You right-size them.
Alive in the age of worry
Smile in the age of worry
Go wild in the age of worry
And sing Worry, why should I care?
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Want a great idea for Mother’s Day come see my show Overnight Sensation that celebrates my mom the heckler, what I inherited from her and the one thing she told me never to do!! TICKETS here! Then click below and listen to Yebba!
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