Futility of worry

My mom quoted this saying, thought to have originated from the Appalachian hills of West Virginia where her maternal German immigrant grandparents settled to farm. Maybe hearing this saying all my life has helped me to put worry in its place. It has always been an useless but eager consumer of my energy that provided NO benefit at all. I would even say that "worry" is really no more than "our desire to control the uncontrollable" and when put that way; it sounds as absurd as I have seen it all these years.

Worry and loneliness were two concepts that seemed foreign to my mother. She filled her life with happy thoughts and loved ones and always "looked on the bright side" of things. I just have to ask myself, well, why not? Just because optimists are often called "cock-eyed" or delusional doesn't mean that her nugget of wisdom was less valid. She lived by it and she would often say that "it didn't do her any good" to worry about it so "why waste my time"?

Life lessons can be hard to accept and many things can even be viewed as unacceptable in terms of our beliefs and values but we can learn to "let come" (instead of let go; coined by Mel Schwartz) and ACCEPT what we can we cannot change; CHANGE the things we can and the common sense to say "enough is enough" before the rocking chair starts rocking.

It has even been my personal perception that the more we are NOT in control of our situations in life; the MORE we seem to in effort to be in control of them. This is where the futility comes in. Leaning how to "let come" seems to be the most reasonable and sensible thing to do. Things happen. (Some would even say *excrement* happens; and it does!) As Chuck Swindoll would say about attitude: 

"I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me 

and 90% of how I react to it. 

And so it is with you... 

we are in charge of our Attitudes.”

Every time I sit in my mom's great big white wooden rocker, I am comforted in knowing that I can accept "what is" and not try to "rock away" my problems. I can just sit and rock for awhile.