Worry has been a lurking shadow for almost as long as I can remember. Surely in some ways worry has fed a sense discernment within me. However, as with most anything that assumes an oversized place in one’s life, it has without question been a constrictor, choking energy and vitality from me. It clouds not only the willingness to venture down some roads in life, but I have found it also lurks, weighing heavily on my mind and spirit and draining joy and motivation from moments, days, and even whole periods of life when it has spiraled out of control. This exercise of simply being a bit more conscious of when I use the word, often casually, has helped make me aware of how even those seemingly casual uses can inform and frame my larger way of thinking. The result is my world becomes smaller, limited, more tightly controlled in an unhealthy quest for a certainty which can in fact be a dead-zone – a state of being that is not actively engaged with life, but rather, engaged with fear. It is deceptive too, for at times, I can delude myself into believing that it is a spiritual stillness which I am seeking, when in truth, I have succumbed to fear.
Jerome