Tomorrow will care for itself

One of my company newsletters had an article/editorial this month on the subject of worry. Several broad claims were made without any citations to back them up, which tends to set my Snopes sense tingling. It made for good blog fodder, though, which is something I always appreciate. Below are the main points of the article and my responses to each.

1) Citizens of the United States are more worried now than they ever were in the history of the country. 

• I'd like to see some serious psychological studies from a cross-section of history to back this up. Because from what I recall of my own studies, our history started with feeling disenfranchised from our rulers (the British Empire) and progressed to all-out war fought between seasoned troops and farmers. We had a war over states' rights, partly because we had "citizens" who didn't legally count as full people. We participated in two World Wars that sandwiched the Great Depression. We experienced a major terrorist attack. Seems to me we've had some pretty tense times in our history. Why be so worried now?

2) Anxiety/depression medications are big business.

• Undisputed. But sad. Aren't wealthy people supposed to feel safe and happy? Don't we have more money per capita than most of the rest of the world. What's going on?

3) The media is largely to blame.

• As a song from a favorite childhood record says, "You don't have to read about everything they write / And you don't have to watch everything that's on tonight."

4) Worry is a bad habit "just like overeating, biting your fingernails, or smoking."

• Aren't many of the latter habits connected to worrying? Moving on, though, obviously even emotional behavioral patterns become habits, but somehow they are "okay" habits. People can warn you about the dangers of smoking or overeating, or the sheer annoyance of listening as you bite your fingernails, and you don't really mind. Tell me I worry too much and I may have to make a conscious effort to keep my back from flying up higher than an angry cat's.

5) You can stop worrying if you try hard enough (the article suggests keeping a "worry journal" and clocking your worry times). 

• Oh, great, I'm just not trying hard enough. Something else to worry about. Also, even if a worry journal weren't another thing to add to my list of things to keep track of, I see a greater potential for it to remind me of things to worry about than to make me feel better.

6) Worry doesn't accomplish anything.

• 100% agreement. Or as the best summation of this that I've ever read says, "Who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?" (Matthew 6:27).

Jesus doesn't just say "Don't worry." He doesn't even say, "Don't worry...be happy!" Instead, he offers a set of "Don't worry, because..." statements. Don't worry, because life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing. Don't worry, because your heavenly Father feeds the birds and because you are worth even more than the birds. Don't worry, because you can't add time to your life by doing so. Don't worry, because your Father—your Father, who cares for you—is by no means ignorant of your needs. 

To worry is to forget all of the above. And yet this notion that worry is a good and effective pursuit has sunk so deeply into us that it shows itself in how we speak. How often I've said something like, "I'm worried the echo in the room will make it hard for the audience to hear the actors," when what I mean is something more like, "I've identified a potential problem with our acoustics and we need to address it." I'm not truly worried. It isn't worry that makes me aware of my surroundings. People who aren't worried don't float through life in a blissful state of constant oblivion to the world around them, they choose not to dwell on such potential problems for too long. They choose to dwell on the big picture instead.

Big picture, my Father holds all of the history of all of the world in his hands. And he knows what I need.