In My Head

 "You worry too much, you make yourself sad, you can't change fate, so don't feel so bad." - Oingo Boingo No One Lives Forever

I am not worried about living forever. I am worried about our new dishwasher. And the cat needs hundreds of dollars of tests. My son isn't happy at his job. I have no idea when I should retire from my own job. Is that Baker's Cyst behind my right knee ever going to go away? What shall I get my wife for our thirtieth anniversary? Why is CNN inviting Donald Trump to do a Town Hall meeting?

I have a lot of worries. I always have. Perhaps it's part of having an imagination and using those powers for evil instead of good. Evil for myself, primarily. Many is the time that I have spoiled a perfectly good time by worrying about something over which I had no control. Like the verb tense of that last sentence, for example. I worry about things at home when I am away, and then when I get home I wonder if it wouldn't be better to have some time away. 

My mother would have said that I'm not happy unless I'm worrying. She was probably right. In many ways, she was my model for overthinking. She used to refer to this as "fretting." Many was the night that I laid awake, focused on something that might happen the next day at school, and my father's advice was never quite comforting: "You're going to stay up all night worrying and then of course you'll have a hard time tomorrow." Thanks dad. He was right, of course, but the time I spent being agitated about how right he was did not net me any additional rest. 

Sometimes I worry about how much anxiety I feel. 

And that's probably how I will cruise through the latter years of my life as well, wondering what phantom ailment will show up at my next doctor appointment. Or if we have planted enough trees in our yard. The flipside of this, I know, is that all of this troublesome thought provides me with a continual list of things that I can do. Plant more trees. Spend more time on WebMD. My future is a highway littered with agonizing choices and decisions I have yet to confront. 

My wife has helpfully suggested that I try meditation. I have. I worried that I wasn't doing it right. Now I worry that I might make her feel bad by dismissing her suggestion. 

Never a quiet moment in my head.