Worry
9 January 2006
Berkeley, CA
The other day I found myself worrying about something. Doesn't matter what, really. Maybe it was global warming, or my son’s future, or my future. Whatever. I was worried. And I became aware of how familiar the feeling was. Familiar and uncomfortable at the same time.
So what of this word worry? Where does it come from and what are its deeper meanings? Turns out that worry has a short, but ancient lineage. In Middle English it was worrien, form the Old English wyngan. In that form it is related to the Old German word wungen. And here is where it gets interesting – wungen means, “to strangle, or constrict”.
When I am worrying, what am I strangling? What am I constricting? Immediately what came to mind was that I am strangling the possibility for change, for the situation to be any different than it is in that moment.
Until now I never thought of how limiting worry is. This primal focus on one outcome, one unfortunate, unpleasant, or even tragic, outcome.
Worrying, when I look at to through this lens of language, is like having a death grip on the throat of the future. The flow of possibility becomes so constricted that the only droplets that can get past that grip are precisely the ones that I so want to prevent from emerging into the world.
Holding on - even with a light touch - to this notion of worry as a form of strangulation, I can feel myself letting go of some of that worry that I was focused on a minutes ago when I began this entry. I find that I have given myself some breathing room to allow for other possibilities to emerge.
Like most things of this nature, it seems that the antidote for worry is breathing. And there may be something important here. In a way the origins of this word inform me that worry is somehow lodged in the throat, and in the neck. If I open my throat I can also let go of grief, and loss. Opening the throat also allows me to connect more deeply to my heart.
The Medusa story also comes to mind here. It is revealing to hold the image of Medusa’s hair that was transformed into snakes as a manifestation of strangled thoughts with a writhing and worrying nature to them. When Perseus cut off her head, out of that wellspring came the blood that spilled into the ground. From that pool emerged Pegasus, the winged horse, and the patron of creativity, especially poets and writers.
Worry becomes a slayer of the future. It becomes another way for me to lapse into unconsciousness, another way for me to lose my way. And as I open myself up to other ways of being in this moment besides worrying, I find that I become flooded with feelings of compassion and care.
As I let go of worry, I feel a sense of openness to change, an openness to the inherent truth that everything is right here waiting for me. And what is this everything waiting for? Maybe it is waiting for me to release the dammed up possibilities that I have strangled and constricted with so much worrying.