Kimberlee K.

“I can’t worry my way into another outcome in the future. I can (and do) worry myself out of any enjoyment of the present.”

This was one of those lines that, even as I read it for the very first time, I knew it was meant for me to see.

I audibly huffed like a teenager being scolded by a parent and I fought the urge to say, “alright, alright, I GET IT.”

Because like author Nora McInerny stated in this edition of her newsletter, She Tried, I too have had my moments of being a “World Champion Worrier.”

I am so convinced that if I worry hard enough it will make a difference. I will somehow crack the code, find the hidden clues that life must be sprinkling around in my day to day, eventually learn and know enough to somehow avoid the inevitable hardships of life.

I have been blindsided by loss in the past, felt my understanding of what life is and isn’t crumble and sift through my fingers like sand. I am still terrified of the phone ringing at unexpected times, convinced it is more bad news.

And so I worry.

I walk through my days and I worry, convinced I am doing something productive, something that will protect me and those around me. I worry about the decisions I’ve made in the past, convinced that harping on them might punish me enough to never make those mistakes again. I worry about where I am compared to where I should be, afraid that to stop worrying is to stop caring, and to become content is to become vulnerable.

I worry that if I let my guard down, my world will go with it.

Worrying feels noble, it feels necessary. Worrying feels protective and sacrificial.

But what cost am I paying to worry?

Who am I helping?

And, perhaps most importantly, who am I hurting?

What am I gaining, actually, by trying to live 5, 10, 15 years in the future?

And what am I losing?

When I get to that mystical future and I sit in that loss—loss I anticipate, and loss I don’t—I don’t want to wish that I would’ve have been more present in the past. I don’t want to regret wasting all this time worrying. I want to cling to this part of my life, knowing there will be hard parts ahead, but enjoying the wonderful parts available to me right now. I want to have both feet planted right here, and know that I looked around my life and saw it in all its colors.

I don’t want to worry myself out of the present, I want to be in it. All of me, all at once.