Worry

We all tend to spend too much time thinking about things that really either don't amount to much or are things over which we have no control. Worry seems now to be intertwined with our modern culture.

Web media offers stories designed to evoke a response from the reader. Watch for this trend. Next time a "news" story jump-starts your adrenaline, stop and ask yourself whether this is a matter worth pondering or just more filler from the media.

When I was a child, I was the consummate worrier. My family called me their little "worrywart." The tendency for children to worry is not completely bad. It shows a sense of personal responsibility and concern for consequences, the latter trait largely ignored by children today. Worry merely needs to be tamed in children. Fretting too much at any age is like spinning wheels on a car - it gives us something to do without taking us anywhere.

Perhaps one of the goals in life should be knowing what to worry about and when to change our focus to other pursuits. Here are some wise folks expressing the foolishness that is part of worrying:

Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. (Benjamin Franklin)

People gather bundles of sticks to build bridges they never cross. (Unknown)

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. (Elbert Hubbard)

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them. (George Bernard Shaw)

Somehow our devils are never quite what we expect when we meet them face to face. (Nelson DeMille)

If you treat every situation as a life and death matter, you'll die a lot of times. (Dean Smith)

It only seems as if you are doing something when you're worrying. (Lucy Maud Montgomery)

Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow. (Swedish Proverb)

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey. (Thomas Edison)

I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. "Never worry about your heart till it stops beating." (E.B. White)

A day of worry is more exhausting than a day of work. (John Lubbock)

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. (Mark Twain)

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened. (Thomas Jefferson)

Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due. (William Ralph Inge)

Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night. (Unknown)

And my personal favorite:
Rule number one is, don't sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it's all small stuff. (Robert Eliot)