To Fear Fear and Worry is Madness

The only thing we have to fear is to fear fear itself.

Why do we fear fear?

Fear is an involuntary response to the possibility of pain or death. Fear is intuitive and will do the best it can to help us survive and/or endure.

Fear is different from worry.

Worry is voluntary.

We can choose to pick that worry phone up or we can choose to put that phone down or never answer it at all.
If the worry is connected to pain or death, don't worry, fear will take over and do it's best to see us through.

For those of us who worry a lot under the mechanism that most of what we worry about won't come true which makes worry sort of a protective amulet, we need to be careful to make sure that this worrisome weather doesn't turn into a climate of anxiety.

So here's the deal...if you're worrying about say the results of a biopsy that you took last week...worrying won't change the results of that test and you will be dealing with those results soon enough anyways so why let them get in the way of enjoying the days before the result is revealed?

I know this sounds simple and truly it is, we just love to make things more complicated for various, very human reasons. Perhaps we should all return to the mid-20th century to our once and future idol Alfred E Neumann and "what, me worry?"

Some of my teachers said reading Mad magazine would ruin my life. By that time, of course, I was already a faithful reader of Mad magazine so I began to worry that I was already in trouble or my teachers were not as infallible as I thought they were.

It's almost impossible today to recognize how popular, subversive and influential Mad magazine was in the middle to late fifties and early sixties. The price was 25 cents (cheap) and Alfred E Neumann appeared on every cover.

Alfred E was the "what me worry kid" and free as he was of worry, his dim grin suggested a wacky degree of self-satisfied over confidence mixed with despair not recognizing the validity of anything or anyone including himself and the very magazine he was representing.

The epitome of authentic absurdity resonant with the times and reflective of the times ahead. The fifties ended and not everybody was worried.

But I was and still am.

I worry a lot, always have.

Trump just landed in Saudi surrounded by Arabs with swords.

Yeah, I'm worried but I'm not afraid of fear.

Maybe my teachers were right.