I am having a long, slow, and mild freak-out about moving on to the next stage of life. Perhaps “freak-out” is the wrong word for something slow and mild.
Anyway, I was fretting about my fretting, and kind of SCOLDING myself about it—and then I realized I don’t actually have to do anything about it at all. Fretting about stages/aging is like fretting about breathing, or maybe more like being 30,000 feet up on a non-stop flight and fretting that I don’t really want to go there: it doesn’t matter if I’m mentally on-board or not, because I’m PHYSICALLY ON-BOARD.
I can fret all I like about not being ready or not wanting to go onto the next stage or not knowing what I’ll do when I get there, but it’s not like trying to make myself eat better or exercise more, where if I don’t take action nothing will happen. Assuming the plane doesn’t crash, I WILL continue to get older, and probably WILL start adding “Better than the alternative, har har!” every time I say it. Henry WILL go to first grade next year, and I WILL have a different way of living as a result of it. I WILL have to start paying for teenager car insurance and college educations; I WILL have to deal with the children dating, and bringing new people into the family whether I like them or not, and naming their children whatever they choose, and living wherever they want to live; I WILL have to see my face sliding down. Better than the alternative, har har!
The thing is, as with most other fretful situations, it’s not going to happen ALL AT ONCE, so I don’t need to WORRY about it all at once. When my babies were babies, I had a tendency to pre-freak-out about kindergarten and school bus issues and sleepovers (on one memorable occasion I cried over my 2-week-old baby, imagining him an old man in a neglectful nursing home)—but it worked pretty well to override that as much as possible with a Sufficient Unto the Day Is the Trouble Thereof concept, worrying instead about whether the baby ought to have better neck control by now, and are we almost out of diapers, and is this a tooth or an ear infection. That way, by the time it was actually TIME to worry about sleepovers, I was DONE worrying about diapers and teeth and rolling over and could concentrate JUST on sleepover fretting. No sense doubling up unnecessarily.
So in the same way, it would be silly to fret NOW about what kind of person Rob might marry and what that other person’s family might be like, when I’m already pretty busy worrying about his retainers and his high school course selection sheet. It’s not that thinking “I shouldn’t worry” STOPS me from worrying, but sometimes it lets me redirect the worry to CURRENT concerns.
Where was I? Didn’t I start out talking about aging? Young man, have you seen my purse?
This is relatable, alarming and reassuring all at the same time. I’m a pretty big worrier, though it’s something I’m always trying to curb, while my husband goes around glibly saying, “This, too, shall pass.” The only things that help me talk myself down are wise quotes from smart people:
“And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” – Desiderata
and
“When I was pregnant with you, I read every book I could find on how to handle all things from diaper rash to warning lectures on sexually transmitted diseases. I became so appalled by the size of the task that I put my hands on my belly and thought, Oh Lord, can we just back up? But the minute you were born I looked at your hungry, squinched little face and got it: We do this thing one minute at a time. We’ll never have to handle diaper rash and the sex lecture in the same day. My most important work will change from year to year, and I’ll have time to figure it out.” – Barbara Kingsolver
The old man/two-week-old baby in the nursing home! Yes! Except in my case, it was “but no one will ever hire a political-science-major-two-week-old baby.” I was worrying about his college major and subsequent lack of employment before his umbilical cord fell off. Sheesh. It is to laugh at ourselves.
This made me laugh out loud. Young man! Ha!!
That line got me too! That, and the whole thing, as usual.
I am something of a professional Preemptive Worrier, so I fully appreciate this post. Lately, I have been worrying about health issues that I do not have, as if they are somehow inevitable, even though based on family history, age, etc., I don’t have any solid reason to suspect anything will happen. Worrying about it, of course, does nothing but make me feel horribly upset and helpless. So why do I do it? Sigh. Yes, today’s worries are MORE than enough. I need to make my brain understand this.
Oh Swistle, do I know what you mean. My youngest goes to kindergarten next year and the oldest will be a freshman in high school. I’m a little bit lost (sad and happy) about not having a child at home. My inner self is still in her late 20s/early 30s, but recent vacation photos show my face is not in agreement with this. I feel like I need a mentor type person to follow — someone who had babies, cut back on career, raised babies and then made an independent and successful life for herself including contributing in a meaningful financial way to all the older children’s many scary expenses. Where are the magazine articles, blogs and books for ME?
I assume you realize this from all of the collected comments on your blog, but: posts like this are REALLY helpful for fellow worriers. I’m in a totally different stage of life than you are, but seeing you spell out the ways in which you talk yourself down/through worries has made me feel so much better about just about everything in life. Also, I am less terrified of having children, even though I know it will be Hard.
So thank you, sincerely. I really appreciate your writing. :)
Sometimes I wonder if there’s something wrong with me, because I’m not a worrier but I AM a mom. I love my kids (now three twenty-something college graduates), and while I was always concerned enough about their safety to make sure they wore their seatbelts, wore helmets when bicycling, knew how to cross the street and all those other things moms do, I never spent any time thinking about things like you mention here. Nor did I have the “mommy guilt” about going back to work so many talk about. Or the “please stop growing and stay little forever” laments. Could it be because my degrees are in physics and atmospheric science and I work with (and essentially do the same kind of work as) engineers? I never understood why people worry about things that are either extremely unlikely or too far in the future to be relevant.
My guess is that we’re all just born the way we are: some of us are born on one end of the worrying spectrum, and some of us are born on the other, and most of us are born somewhere in between.
Oh yes… I looked at my first born in the hospital and declared I would NEVER send him off to Kindergarten.
Yes! The first paragraph reminded me of going into labor with my oldest and checking into the hospital. They made me sign a form saying I realized I could die during this procedure. It was the first time I’d ever thought about dying in childbirth and all of a sudden I was like, never mind. Not in labor. Unstrap me, I’m going home. And yet the worrying did no good because I WAS in labor.
I cried over my two week old son at the thought of having to be someone’s mother in law.
Ha ha! Yes, I did the mother-in-law one, too! I forgot about that! I’ve recently revived that one.
I used to think my “worst case scenario” thinking kept me prepared and on my toes. A few years ago I realized that instead, I was living my life in a constant low level of anxiety. Not very healthy! Finally, I said no more-and developed this mantra-when I feel myself getting worked up, anxious, I take a deep breath, hold, and slowly release-all the while thinking “change”. I used to think this kind of stuff was new agey, and certainly not for me-but this seems to flip a switch for me, and I immediately calm down.
Swistle, what you said about it not all happening at one time, that is so true! Things are much easier to handle in “real time” than in your head, and I try to remember that.
Just where were you when mine was small?! Oh yeah, blogs hadn’t been invented yet.
I could have used this to talk me down off the ledge many, many times. It seems that I worry about aging and other inevitable things far more than I should – while the things I SHOULD worry about sit neglected in a corner.
Oh, man. This post really spoke to me. I was a worrier before my first child was born this year, and I’ve basically had to stop myself from reading the news because all the awful things that happen to kids keep popping up in my newsfeed and IT FREAKS ME THE HELL OUT. I’m not so much worried/fretting about life happening, but more about BAD life happening. Because it’s so random, it can happen to anyone, and I can’t protect her from it no matter how vigilant I am.
I love the “Sufficient Unto the Day Is the Trouble Thereof” thing… I’ve never heard it before but I’m going to latch onto it like it’s a freaking life preserver. Thanks for sharing!
I actually recommend Dale Carnegie’s “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.” I see it’s been recently revised, but I have an older version, from around 1948, and amid all the cheesiness and quotes from people I’ve never heard of, one of his fundamental messages is about not worrying beyond what you can handle today. It’s cheering.
One more thing I want to mention-the media reports breed fear. Before I had the internet (I’m 52) all this kidnapping, hostage, child abuse stuff didn’t worry me because I had never really been exposed to it. I was vigilant with my child, because that is my nature. Now one terrible thing happens, and it is homepage news. If I were a young mother now-I might be a basket case.
Someone mentioned Dale Carnegie above, and seriously-sometimes the old ways are the best ways.