Why Worry?

I’m just finishing an excellent book, ‘Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times’ by Marianne Cooper. It is an excellent overview of our present day life of how different types of families deal with insecurity. She interviews fifty families that represent the gamut of under-employed to millionaire families. What I like about this excellent overview of life in 2014 is how the author looks at what makes people feel secure in life or the reverse of what is it that we worry about or feel insecure about.

I lived in her target area as a young married couple with our first child. Our daughter was born premature and was literally flown up to a hospital in the SF area where she lived for almost a year in a neo-natal ICU. We lived in Palo Alto for over a year and thoroughly enjoyed the area.  This clearly was one of the more expensive places to live in our country. The shock of disparity came when we took our micro-daughter for a ride to a local park only to discover that we lived in the wrong zip code of Palo Alto and weren’t allow to enjoy the park! We left outraged and confused about why this park was off limits for East Palo Alto families like us.

It is so easy to let many different things in life control our emotions and ability to find peace and joy in life. The fascinating thing about this book is that it reveals that anxiety over finances isn’t just for the working poor but also for the elite that are wealthy. I can’t fathom stressing out about not having enough for a college fund if I had 100K plus in an account. The context very much reveals that everyone has issues in life, which we can allow to take the joy and peace out of our lives. I can remember my parents always telling me that hard work and determination will get you through anything.  Yet, the difficulty is I can hear all of the right things and still be stressing out about my five year old’s college fund.

I have chosen to work in marginalized neighborhoods where few have jobs and those that do are working at substandard wages. It is interesting to me that I see stress and anxiety in all of my friends regardless of their backgrounds.  Worry seems to be rampant in all cultural settings about the future. The book does an excellent job of unfolding how different families deal with their insecurity in life. Clearly I’m one that would fall in the category of trusting God with my future, still plan, think about it but don’t let it derail me from living today. Many in my educational setting are worried that retirement isn’t going to happen soon because of the roller coaster economy.

Most of my friends in my neighborhood deal with more typical needs, such as whether there is any means to buy food for dinner tonight or whether there is any money on the empower box. (This equates to whether your lights will be on in the morning.) Most of us pay our bills online and would never fathom driving for hours to pay bills in cash. Yet, most of my neighborhood friends scorn paying by check and definitely online because of the fear that it won’t actually go through. So instead they will drive for hours personally delivering their payments in cash.

Insecurity is a fact of life and the issue is how we choose to deal with it on a daily basis. I can allow my debt level to become all-consuming and suffer from depression or I can pretend that it doesn’t matter as I continue to spend beyond my means. The reality for all is that we live in a time when it’s too easy to either overreact or underreact to life circumstances. I love how Christ tells his disciples that worry doesn’t ever accomplish anything. He uses an example of how the birds of the air don’t have to worry about food, shelter or sunshine. Clearly, I’m not able to worry my grey hair away or cause more hair to grow if I’m bald! The opportunity is to take life one day at a time and enjoy the part of life that is incredible and then learn to gain a better perspective on our challenges.

I know that the song, ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy!’ doesn’t mean that the bad stuff will disappear but my ability to see it from a better perspective will help me be less likely to have a meltdown! Why worry?