The older I get, the less I worry.
That doesn't mean I don't worry. Just that I'm beginning to realize worry doesn't help anything.
Prayer does, so the older I get, the more I pray.... that God will show me what I can do to help the situation, and if there's nothing I can do, to help me step back and let him take care of things.
...And that no matter what, I never lose hope.
When I do worry, it's about my kids... our finances... Tom's health... um... I think that's it. Next to those, nothing else seems to matter that much.
Oh, I pray about much more than that... issues that my friends and family are dealing with... social problems in the world... but I'm talking about that knotted up, gray-cloud-of-despair, helpless type of worry.
I recently came across this list that author F. Scott Fitzgerald gave to his 11-year-old daughter, Scottie, in 1933.
Things to worry about:
Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship
Things not to worry about:
Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions
Things to think about:
What am I really aiming at?
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:
(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?
With dearest love,
Daddy
I don't agree with him on all of the items (horsemanship?), but I do on quite a few (especially the "nots") and like that he divided it between things we have control over and things we don't.
I wish I'd had the forethought to give my kids a list like this when they were younger.
They probably wouldn't have listened to me, though.
I wonder if F. Scott's daughter listened to him? Probably not. We all seem to have to learn the hard way, right?
So... what do you worry about?
