Don't Worry, Take Action, Get Results

This passage is from the book 365 Tao

Worry

Worry is an addiction
That interferes with compassion.

Worry is a problem that seems to be rampant. Perhaps it is due to the nature of our overly advanced civilization; perhaps it is a measure of our own spiritual degeneracy. Whatever the source, it is clear that worry is not useful. It is a cancer of the emotions – concern gone compulsive. It eats away at body and mind.

It does no good to say, “Don’t think about it.” You’ll only worry more. It is far better to keep walking your path, changing what you can. The rest must be dissolved in compassion. In this world of infants with immune deficiencies, racial injustice, economic imbalance, personal violence, and international conflict, it is impossible to address everyone’s concerns. Taking care of yourself and doing something good for those whom you meet is enough. That is compassion, and we must exercise it even in the face of the overwhelming odds.

Whenever you meet a problem, help if it is in your power to do so. After you have acted, withdraw and be unconcerned about it. Walk on without ever mentioning it to anybody. Then there is no worry, because there has been action.

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This is my response:

Ordinarily I wouldn’t have anything to say about this passage. I am the type of person to take action in the face of problems, either to resolve them quickly or to prevent them from getting bigger. Indeed, the most common thing I used to say to my ex-wife was “don’t worry” when she was obsessing about something small in the future, or even about something big in the future. My attitude has always been if it is small we shouldn’t be discussing it, and if it is big we should be discussing it, so talking and then taking action eliminates the need to worry about it.

I have generally had the same attitude toward anger. It is worth getting angry about things over which you have control, but which are not working as you wish. If you do have control, then sufficient planning should help things go as you wish, and if you don’t have control, then getting angry is pointless. These were things I kept telling my ex-wife in the early days of our marriage (in 2000 and 2001) because she had an anger problem. She would worry about everything, and she would get angry about very small things. It was her default reaction. She would worry because she had nothing better to do, and she would get angry because she didn’t know any better response to situations.

When I was taking care of my two kids as a stay-at-home dad, I lived around my mother-in-law a lot. She did not get angry much, but she constantly worried about everything, and she told both me and my ex-wife about her worries daily. My ex-wife and I learned to filter out these worries since they had no impact on our family, but it was interesting to see the life of someone who always worries.

My mother-in-law was a coward. She was afraid of everything: how people would think of her, how people would think of me and my ex-wife, what would happen with her family, what would happen with money, etc. She almost never took action, even when my ex-wife provided very detailed instructions about how to take even simple actions. So, instead of doing things, my mother-in-law simply asked us to do stuff for her, and then she worried the rest of the time about everything.

I have learned that being worried means being limited in approach and looking only at the appearances of things. Worry not only interferes with compassion, it is the product of a lack of creativity and intelligence.

My mother-in-law was crafty in that she knew how to manipulate people with her words and actions, but she had no clue how anything around her actually functioned. She lacked intelligence, or perception into the nature of reality, and therefore she did not think about new ways to accomplish things. She always talked about the way things were in Bulgaria, as if that was the way things were supposed to be.

My own mother is not much better. At least my mother thinks about the nature of things and tries to look beyond surface appearances. Therefore my mother rarely worries about anything. However, despite this lack of worry, she still thinks that the way things are in her city is the way things are everywhere. She doesn’t think creativey. Therefore, all of her ideas come from someone else.

I’m grateful that I didn’t learn how to worry from my mother, and therefore the lessons of this passage don’t really apply to me. Yet, I have to constantly remind myself that action is required on everything.