Worry never stops. Worry comes about when we want to control the outcome things but cannot.
Humans like to be in control. We want things to go exactly how we want. We want the security - the guarantee - that things will be always ok throughout our lives. We want to know that we’ll pass that test or get that job – before it even comes up. We want to know that our children will be all right out in the world when they leave the nest. We want to know that we will have enough money to last us for the rest of our lives.
Yet, no matter how much we desire it, we will never be in control. We can’t see the future. We cannot see all the outcome of all choices before they are made. We can do our best and hope that it turns out for the good, but we can never know for sure unit it actually happens – if it even happens. “If”. Oh, how we hate that word. “If” is conditional, it implies doubt and uncertainty... “If it doesn’t rain this weekend …”, “if you clean your room…”, “if they find a vaccine…”. Doubt generates worry. “What if I don’t get the job?” “What if I get the virus?” Our minds don’t do well with “if”. Instead of going to the best outcome, our minds always seem to go to the worst-case scenario - “If I don’t get the job we’ll have no food, we’ll lose our home…”. Worry keeps awake at night. Worry causes pain in our bodies. Yet 9 out of 10 times, that “worst-case scenario” we worried about never happens.
Parents have double the worry – per child. As kids, we think that life will be “perfect” once we move away from home. Many of us can’t wait until were 18 so we can be free of our parent’s tyrannical rule and live in “bliss”. Then we become parents and suddenly everything changes. What if that cough a sign of a serious disease? What if something happens to him on the way to school? What if she actually marries that degenerate? But our parenting worries don’t stop when our kids finally leave home. What if he can’t pay his bills? What if she gets pregnant? What if they move so far away that I won’t be able to me see my grandkids? In fact, we find that our parenting worries last us for the rest of our lives. However, this kind of worry isn’t just because we can’t control the outcome of things, it’s because we love them and can’t control the outcome of things. If only they were little again.
After consulting several thesauruses, "control" was the best word I could find to express my thought. Not control as in “dominate”, more like "have charge of".
Worry is uncertainty (doubt). We're not sure how an outcome will turn out, so we worry about it. We can't "control" the outcome (meaning we can’t be 100% sure of what it will be - if we were sure, we wouldn't worry), so that uncertainty causes us to fret. For example, say a person knows they're going to have a big test at school on Friday. Even though they studied hard for the test, they still may lie awake the night before the test worrying about it. Why? They studied; they know the material. So why does the person worry? Uncertainty. What if they studied the wrong chapter? What id they show up and the test is already over? What if they somehow show up to school in their underwear? (When we worry, our minds can go to some bizarre places). Now, if the person could “control” the situation (have charge of), say, they could know (ahead of time) exactly what the test questions will be (not the answers), they wouldn’t have to worry. They’d simply memorize the material on those questions and ace the test.
What word would you have used instead of “control”?
Shuhak 