People, people, people. I want you to put on your glasses and get out a pen and notebook, because I’m about to give you a Great Truth that some of you may already have figured out. Here it is.
There’s no point in worrying about anything, because the things you worry about never happen. It’s the things you never expected that will wallop you and knock you across the room.
My mom was a nonstop worrier. To her, the glass was always half empty. One time, I told her on the phone proudly that I’d just been promoted at work. Five minutes later, she asked if I thought I might be laid off.
I decided to adopt foster siblings and keep them together, because my mom was an orphan who’d been separated from her sisters and it scarred her life. When I told her I was adopting two kids, she was opposed to the whole idea. Too dangerous. Too risky. Luckily, at this point in my life, I usually ignored her predictions of doom.
Apropos of nothing, when I also announced at a dinner party I’d decided to adopt children through the foster system, an otherwise intelligent and accomplished friend of mine looked at me and said, “Aren’t you afraid of getting tainted genes?”
I told him that I could only improve my gene pool by going outside of it, considering both my father and my brother had been to jail, and my mom had been married four times.
My kids are grown now, and they do not have tainted genes. But my daughter, Curly Girl, has over the last decade developed such a case of anxiety that she has regular panic attacks. This is the opposite of her girlhood, when she was so bold she’d do nearly anything.
I try to persuade her to fight back against her fears, but with limited success. Author Susan Jeffers’ book, “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway” is one of my mantras.
I’m not trying to pretend that I’m a brave and fearless person. I get plenty scared and worry about things just like everyone else.
As many of you know, parenthood is the biggest source of anxiety, because you can’t help worrying about everything, even before the little darling is born.
- You won’t be able to find child care.
- Your babysitter will steal your baby and raise it as her own. (Trust me, this only happens in TV shows.)
- Your boss will fire you after she discovers that you sneaked out early to attend your kid’s kindergarten graduation.
- A dingo will come from Australia and eat your baby.
- Your adorable child will get a C in calculus and won’t get into Harvard.
NONE of these things that keep you awake at night will actually happen. So relax.
- What will actually happen is that little Sean will spit up all over your new suit — moments before the big job interview.
- Your 5-year-old son will find the box full of Sharpies and decide to redecorate your spare bedroom, an hour before your in-laws arrive for a week’s visit.
- Your babysitter will get the flu on the very day that you have an important presentation at work, and you have to bring the kid with you. No one thinks this is cute.
- Just when you proudly think to yourself that you made it through the entire month and paid all your bills by the skin of your teeth, your kid will walk in from school and announce he needs $257 for science camp, and he needs it by tomorrow because he forgot to give you the flyer.
- Your best friend will treat you to a mani-pedi for your birthday, and while you’re in the chair, the school calls to tell you to come pick up your kid, because she has lice in her hair.
- Your daughter will decide to stick a plastic BB in her ear and you have to go to the emergency room to have it removed.
- Your spouse will decide this parenting thing is for the birds, and take a permanent hike.
Of course, things go wrong even if you don’t have kids in the house. You worry about the demise of Social Security. But you should be worrying about the leak in the roof that you’ll soon discover. If you’re worrying about things you can control — like getting your tax return done — then fix the problem and the anxiety will stop.
But trust me, every big problem I’ve ever had — from a brain tumor to cancer to my son driving his car off a bluff in Utah — were things that never occurred to me would ever happen.
Things I did worry about, like losing my job like so many of my colleagues, hasn’t happened. At least not yet.
So, I say be like Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman. “What, me worry?” And just do what you want. The chips will fall where they may.
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