Why Worry?

A participant once shared this with me: “I listened to last week’s recording, where you spoke about worry. My son had traveled to Tbilisi, in Georgia, off to the mountains, the villages, to go climbing, I’m not even sure what. And I wasn’t hearing from him. But I told myself: he’s probably just enjoying himself, or he’s somewhere with no reception, and everything is fine. And I wasn’t worried.”

I asked her: Is that real? You’re truly not worried?

“Compared to how I used to be? Completely. I wouldn’t be sitting here now.”

Years ago, Byron Katie visited Israel, an American teacher who devoted her life to helping people close the gap between what is and what they believe should be. At a gathering at Kibbutz Ga’ash, a woman in the audience asked for help: “My son is in the army. I’m not hearing from him, I don’t know what’s happening. I think he’s in Lebanon. I’m in total panic, I can’t sleep, I’m consumed with worry. Help me, how do I calm down?”

Byron Katie asked her, “Where is your son right now? You don’t know, in Lebanon?” “No, no,” the woman said, “right now it’s the weekend, he’s at the beach with friends. He went out. But I still can’t calm down.” “So your son is at the beach with friends?” “Yes.” “But in your mind, he’s in Hezbollah’s dungeons, and God knows what they’re doing to him there.” “Yes.”

Do you see it? The gap between what is and what I wish should be is the very same gap as between what is and what I’m afraid will happen. One reaches into the past, the other into the future, but both measure how far we’ve drifted from being aware and present within what actually is. And the further we drift, the less sane we become.

Now, someone will say: “What? My son is in the army, you think I won’t worry? Of course I’ll worry.” And I say: that’s fine. I’m not making a moral case against worry. I’m simply offering an alternative. If you choose to keep worrying, that’s completely legitimate. You’re allowed to worry. But you can also not worry. That’s the whole message: you get to choose how you want to live.

Notice, too, a certain conditioning we carry, a belief that if we cover every possibility in our minds, it’s a kind of insurance policy, so life can’t catch us off guard. “I’ll imagine all the terrible things that might happen; then if one of them actually does, I’ll tell myself, ‘Good, I prepared for this, I can handle it,’ because I already ran it as a simulation.” Do you see? It’s a defense against life. “I can’t allow myself not to worry, because then I give life the chance to surprise me, and it would be too big, too violent, too much; I couldn’t cope. So I run every terrible simulation in advance, so life can’t surprise me.”

And meanwhile, what’s actually happening? While I run these dreadful simulations, my son is at the beach, playing paddleball with his friends. So Byron Katie asked the woman, “And what kind of mother does this make you?” “A terrible one,” she said. “I worry all the time, I keep calling, ‘What’s happening?’ He doesn’t even answer anymore. He avoids me. He’s had enough.” This is a parable for how we run our relationships, with the people we love, and with life itself. What kind of people do we become when we live in fear of life?

And then the honest question arrives: “All right, I’m not worried, all is well, but maybe I should do something? Maybe I’m sitting in too much peace. Maybe I should check, just in case.” No, not at that stage. There is a stage that arrives when you catch yourself and say, “Wow, look how calm I am.”

So how will you know what to do, whether to raise the red flag or not, and when? The answer is always the same: raise the flag when the very movement of raising it is a movement of love, and not of fear.

Loving does not mean you never raise a red flag. Sometimes the flag must be raised. I don’t become indifferent or uncaring, quite the opposite. Sometimes love itself has to sound the alarm.

I once met my teacher, Guruji, in Italy. We were in his hotel room, in the middle of a conversation, when suddenly he stopped, as if someone had pulled a handbrake. He asked his assistant to come over and said: “Call our teacher in Argentina. Someone there was in a car accident. Find out what’s happening, whether they need help.” Not because he was afraid. Not because he was worried. Because love simply flows to where it is needed, without commotion, without drama. Where something needs to be filled, it fills.

And then you ask: but how will I know? Where it’s going, what’s needed, who needs it, when, how can I possibly know? The answer to that question is full of mystery. You will know, when you are free of fear, worry, and suffering. It happens by itself.

Here we have to be brave, and look at this fear honestly. Yes, we’re afraid for our loved ones, that no harm comes to them, that they live happy, peaceful, safe lives. But beneath that hides a larger, deeper fear: the fear of my own pain, the pain I would feel if I learned that something happened to those I love. And beneath even that hides something deeper still: what will happen to me if something terrible happens to my loved ones? Who will I be without this relationship that is so important to me, so sacred?

Once, the answer to “Who am I?” was: I am my son’s mother, or this man’s wife, or so-and-so’s closest friend. But tomorrow I may no longer be able to build my answer that way, because the relationship will be gone. So then, who will I be?

We have to be brave and look this fear in the eyes. The medicine is self-knowledge. Self-knowledge unravels the automatic link between the relationships I hold and the very definition of who I am. The relationships I’m in no longer serve as the answer to “Who am I?” Again, this does not mean I cut off my relationships. It does not mean I stop caring, or grow cold and indifferent. Far from it, the opposite. I simply no longer hang the answer to “Who am I?” upon them.

Who I am exists before this relationship was born, and after this relationship dies, and it is destined to die, whether I go first or the other does. The answer to “Who am I?” exists apart from events and from time. It has nothing to do with what has happened or what will happen. And that is exactly what carries such an extraordinary potential for freedom.

So here is an exercise. Picture one of your relationships, it doesn’t matter whether it’s your son, a friend, your husband, anyone. Now cleanse that relationship completely of every trace of fear, of every kind. How would it look, that relationship, with no fear in it at all?

What do you say?