Why We Shouldnt Worry

Why We Shouldnt Worry



Almost everyone experiences some form of worry one time or another. It is a part of life. Everyday, we struggle financially, make decisions, and face major changes in life. These things create an inevitable occasional wave of apprehension. Ordinarily, a certain amount of worry is essential for our survival. It helps us to focus on the task at hand and leads us to constructive action. However, when worry goes overboard, instead of being a good friend, reminding us to use good sense, worry suddenly morphs into a bully, making us crazy about things we can't control. Here's a list of reasons why constant worry is not good, if it is at all:

1. Worry is a Complete Waste of Time

Worry changes nothing. We don't accomplish anything or find answers to our questions by worrying. We also cannot add anything to our life by worrying. Worry can only subtract from our lives by causing such infirmities like ulcers or coronary thrombosis. Worry is just muddling away today’s time to clutter up tomorrow’s opportunities with yesterday’s troubles.

2. Worry is Unnecessary

Worry can't erase the mistakes of the past. It can't unravel the answers to the future. It can't make anything better in the present. Hence, there is no need for worry because it is inessential.

3. Worry Contradicts Common Sense

We must learn to live one day at a time. God has given us our lives in units of twenty-four hours and we should take life a day at a time. If we wish to live a long and fruitful life, we should respect and live by the biological clock He has built inside us.

4. Worry is Illogical

Worry is illogical because it is futile, unproductive and pointless. It is faith in the negative, trust in the unpleasant, assurance of disaster and belief in defeat. We do not know what tomorrow may bring, so there is no point in worrying about it. Why look ahead and worry about things that have not yet happened. They may just never happen anyway.

5. Worry Creates the Problem

If we are focused on our fears, we are more likely to crash into them. Thinking about them is a confirmation bias of their existence making them exist even if they aren't really there.

6. Worry Distracts Our Attention

Worry distracts us from the duties of the present. It grabs our attention from the things of utmost importance. It interferes with our highest functioning and delicious enjoyment of life. Worry is an uninvited guest who spoils all our fun, making our shoulders droop and forehead crease just when we should be feeling triumphant or carefree or filled with hope.

7. Worry Doubles Our Problems

To anticipate future troubles by worrying about them today is to double them. We already have enough troubles today. Today's problems are all we are capable of handling. Worrying for tomorrow stacks up more problems than we can handle.

8. Worry Diverts our Point of Life

Life is far more important than material things. So often our worries are about relatively unimportant and trivial matters, such as food, drink, clothing, houses and cars. If we seek fulfilment in material things, we are missing the whole point of life. The point of life is the fulfillment of our purpose. Our life purpose is a combination of three things: who we are at the very core, our vision for our self and what we see possible for the world and our values. Instead of working out for our purpose, worry takes us away from the main stream of life completely diverting us from our point of life.

9. Worry is Toxic to our Health

When we worry, every system in our body is affected. Blood clotting increases, blood pressure rises, and the liver produces more cholesterol, all of which raises our risk of heart attack and stroke. Muscle tension gives rise to headaches, back pain, and other body aches. It also triggers an increase in stomach acid and either slow or speed up muscle contractions in our intestines, which can lead to stomach aches, constipation, diarrhea, gas or heartburn. Worry can also affect our respiratory system by aggravating asthma.

It is a medical fact that worriers die sooner than the non-worriers. That is because, as Dr. E. Stanley Jones says, "we are not designed to live in fear and worry." To live by worry is against our own nature. That is why worry is so destructive.

10. Worry Affects the People we Love

The Greek word for “worry” is "merimnaw" which literally means “to be drawn in different directions.” In logical terms, worry tears us to pieces spiritually, psychologically, physically and even socially. When we become too focused on our worries, we forget about the things that really matters, even the people we care. It is a constant and dominating force that disrupts our lives and disconnects us from others.

We don't have to deny our worries or push them out to the limits because in reality, we can't. It is a part of us. It is our nature. Indeed, worry is good to some extent. It only takes a toll on our lives if we are so consumed in it. If we hang around it day in and day out, it can short circuit our own electrical systems and leave us malfunctioning. We should take control over our worries instead of letting them take control over us. Worries are only in our head, thus it leaves us a choice whether to allow them to propagate or just forget about them. Sometimes, the process of worrying about a problem becomes much bigger than the problem itself. So we often need to learn to deal with worries head on. We should choose to think of the present concerns and decide to do something about them instead of simply worrying on them.

Why Worry About Small Small Things?

Why worry about small
small things?

Because English and Indian languages differ widely in behaviour, some of our ways of expression can newer be recreated in English. Indlish sounds ludricrous when we recreate the reduplication that all Indian languages permit either for musical effect or for emphasis:

Hindi

• chhoti chhoti baaten (trivial issues/trifles)
• chori chori (stealthily)
• baaton baaton mein (in the course of a chat)

Bengali

• chhoto chhoto katha (trivial issues/trifles)
• choopi choopi (stealthily)
• kathay kathay (in the course of a chat)
• kaanay kaanay (whisper)
• mookhay mookhay (by word of mouth)

Oriya

• bada bada katha (big talk)
• kahu kahu kahidela (in the course of a chat)
• astay astay kar (take it easy)

Tamil

• chinna chinnaa asai (little dreams)
• vanna vanna pookkal (colourful flowers)
• odi odi va (run here)
• parandu parandu po (fly there)

Malayalam

• kochchu kochchu karyangal (trivial issues/trifles)
• kayttu kayttu mathiyayi (my ears are stuffed with it)
• vegam vegam pokaam (let’s go fast)

Telugu

• chala chala bagunadi (very very good)
• ekku ekku ga (more and more)
• pitchi pitchi ga matladaku (don’t rant like a madman)
• daba daba ga panichayandi (work fast)

Kannada

• hannu hannu muduka (grand old man)
• chikka chikka makkalu (little children)
• bega bega ba/odi odi ba (run here)

Marathi

• chotya chotya goshti (trivial issues/trifles)
• kadhi kadhi (sometimes)
• khare khare sang (come out with the truth)

All those expressions are idiomatic and lend music to our regional languages. The translation alongside each is inadequate: it carries neither the music nor the effect, and almost nothing of the connotation. No translation can convey the flavour of any of those expressions.

English does not permit reduplication for meaningful effect. The few examples that English does permit achieve little more than meaningless sound – effects in:

finger rhymes for babies (this little pig said wee wee wee)
animal sounds (baa-baa/moo-moo/meow-meow/quack-quack)
nursery rhymes (twinkle twinkle little star/hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle)
light songs (in a gilly – gilly house . . .)

English permits the replication (not reduplication) of a sound – effect (hickory dickory dock . . . / . . . and there in the wood a piggy – wiggy stood), or the close repetition of words in songs (in a tiny house by a tiny stream, where a lovely girl had a lovely dream).

In some poems, words are repeated for heightened effect (In vain I weep to him that cannot hear, and weep the more because I weep in vain: Coleridge), or a whole line is repeated in refrain (For I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep: Robert Frost). In English, the closest to reduplication would be those few rhyming pairs used in informal adult speech to emphasize an idea, usually derogatory. Unlike the Indian expression that repeats the identical word, the English word pairs with:

1 word that replicates the sound of the first, but with a change in the initial consonant (argy – bargy; fuddy – duddy; fuzzy – wuzzy; harum – scarum; heebie – jeebies; helter – skelter; higgledy-piggledy; hoity – toity; hotch – potch; hurly – burly; itsy – bitsy; miminy – piminy; namby – pamby; niminy – piminy; nitty – gritty; razzle – dazzle; roly – poly; teeny – weeny).

2 a word that begins with the same consonant sound, but changes a vowel within (dilly – dally; flip – flop; flim – flam; hee – haw; hip – hop; mish – mash; see – saw; tip – top; tittle – tattle; whim – wham; wiggle – waggle; wishy – washy).

Often, only the first word may carry the meaning intended; the second may have no meaning or existence independent of the combination (fuzzy – wuzzy). With a few, neither of the pair may have a meaning, and neither is used along (fuddy – duddy; hoity – toity; niminy – piminy). Others may retain the sense of neither when each of the pair has an independent meaning (hip – hop; hurly – burly).

Readers will at once recognize that all Indian languages have such imitative rhyming pairs too, made with similar changes in the initial consonant or vowel sounds: such a term for things around you, for instance, would be aas paas (Hindi); aashay paashay (Bengali); pakha pakhi (Oriya); sutta mutta/akkaa pakkaa (Kannada); ikkada akkada (Telugu); akkam pakkam (Tamil); aviday ividay (Malayalam); aazu baazu (Marathi), etc.

But Indians often recreate in English the reduplication they are accustomed to use in their languages, and this has led to what Englishmen consider a comical feature of Companion to the Indlish. In its list of features of Indian English, the Oxford Companion