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Why Worry Is Pointless

Writer's picture: Ian CatterallIan Catterall

"Life is not even close to being as logically consistent as our worries - it has many more unexpected ideas." So said the Austrian poet Rilke. His work is worthy of further investigation.


What I think he meant here is we never know what is going to happen; in fact often the thing we've been worrying about happening doesn't and it's something else we hadn't even took time to consider that causes problems. Given this, why worry at all?


We worry because we hope that if we put enough thought into something we might work out how to gain control over it and come up with a simple solution. However, the world rarely offers itself to simple solutions or to present us with the problems we have manufactured solutions for.


In fact, one thing just leads to another series of things to consider - we do one thing and it inevitably nudges other things into view. Stuff will always be happening!


We often try to live life like a game of chess, plotting 3 moves ahead and constantly considering our opponents moves. Instead perhaps consider it more a game of Tetrus: the blocks come down in colours and shapes we have no way of predicting or controlling but we deal with them as they fall. No worrying about it being 4 squares instead of 5 in a row - just moving it into place and watching for the next one to appear, no worrying about what might come, simply dealing with what does.


Seneca believed that the wise are those who are fully aware of the random nature of reality. Worrying about how this randomness will show itself is often unhelpful and pointless. Instead deal with things as best you can as they arise rather than worrying about things we have little or no control over anyway.


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