Let Go of Worry Before Worry Wastes Your Dreams

Would you take advice from an insane advisor? Sure you would, and do.
Worry is a destructive force.
Worry wrings her sore red hands, pulls at her hair, imagines 3,000 ugly scenarios and calls herself productive. She thinks creative imagination is such a flower child. She wishes hope could get more “realistic.” She dresses in warm clothes with extra buttons, scarves to protect her neck, and sensible colors,  in case some fighting bull broke loose, blasted into the city and mistook her for a matador, because you really never know. Worry decides that if two different experts predict two different results, it’s always best to go with the one who slams more doors. Why get your hopes up, when you can dash them on the rocks now, save time, and double the chance that you won’t do a thing to better your situation.  Worry is a horrible consultant, but I often go to her just the same because she is loud, pushy, and persistent, and has been a friend of the family for years.  That and I have confused her with her beautiful and sanguine sister “awareness.”
Worry doesn’t have time to pet the cats, plant tulips, or feed the robins and cardinals.  Worry loves to watch the news about car wrecks, and murders, at least thirty seven times a day, so she can stay “informed.”  She bites her nails, then Googles the risks of short nails. Worry worries about “consumer confidence” then email blasts all her friends about a coming recession.  She looks at my artist self as such a dizzy fool, splashing paints, dabbling in words. She wishes my creative instincts would grow up and get real. She wishes they would look up all known diseases, fluctuating economic changes, possible global changes, investigate them all, explore the ramifications, research insurance policies and their riders, and finally do something useful with their time. She secretly thinks that trust is the devil’s squire, and meditation is a worm hole that can suck you into other dimensions, shedding bits of your brain cells in the wake. 
Worry imagines standing naked in front of an IRS agent, forgetting to take her 10 cent coupon to the market, having a wrinkle in her cotton blouse, and not knowing what to research first in the case of an alien invasion. Worry hates looking at the stars because she fears a meteor falling on the softest part of her head. Worry secretly worries that there’s something really big she should be worrying about only it hasn’t crossed her mind yet. Worry worries about her blood pressure which inflames her blood pressure.
She never imagines financial success, a new grandchild, a hit song, a Wild Loving Infinite Intelligence ushering the atoms, moon and stars, or true love pounding down the door. She has no time for such frivolities because her mind is crowded with earthquakes, mad cow disease, terrorist attacks, money falling through the cracks and things her sister might say about her to niece.  Worry insists that the part of me that laughs and trusts and soars inside myself is really avoiding the strain of it all, jumping on broken ice, and thrusting her head in the clouds. Worry insists that having her head down the drain and in the sewer is so much more realistic.
Just in case you’re tempted to occasionally agree with my friend Worry, I’d like to share these words with you from Mahatma Ghandi: “There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.” I’m not a fan of the shame aspect, as I believe faith is an ongoing, acquired practice, but I get the drift and suspect that you do, too. The Dalai Lama also offers salve: “If there is a solution to a problem, there is no need to worry. And if there is no solution, there is no need to worry.”
Finally, I found this quote from an Unknown Source and couldn’t resist tucking it into your bonnet, as well: “Do not be afraid of tomorrow; for God is already there.”