The Mystery of the Quotient: Don't Worry

My anxiety got the better of me last Wednesday afternoon.

I was on my way home, and I hadn't heard from my youngest daughter, K, when she got home from school. She calls me when she gets home so I know she made it there safely. But on this day, I hadn't heard from her, and there was no answer when I called the house.

My son, Z, had texted me that he had forgotten his key, and that his phone battery was at 1%. So I couldn't contact and check with him to see that he made it, or that K was with him.

A couple weeks ago, K had said she wanted to just spend a couple days at her mom's, and not come to my house. This was okay; it gave me a couple evenings 1-on-1 with Z.

My oldest daughter, A, who is 16, has not come to my house in the last year. What contact we have is in the lobby of her therapist's office, or I have said hi to her at K's gymnastics time.

Because A hasn't been coming to my house, and with K asking a couple weeks ago to spend time at her mom's, I suddenly thought that K was now pulling away from me as well. I had any number of ideas of how I would handle this.

Intellectually, the left side of my brain was telling me "Dude, she forgot her key, too. It's hanging on the lanyard on her closet door. The hide-a-key wasn't replaced the last time it was used. She's just waiting outside at the front of the house." But this didn't cause the tightness in my chest to go away. It didn't make my stomach ache unwind.

The anxiety had strangely taken hold of me. These sort of situations are ones that in the last year I have been able to turn off, by making a gratitude list in my mind, or some quiet meditation, or some breathing exercises. The closer I got to home, the less and less I considered them as viable ways to combat the unease that was washing over me.

When I came around the corner in front of my house, there they are, Z and K, sitting on the steps reading books. Immediately a flood of relief swept over me, and they hopped up smiling and ran into the house as the garage door opened after I hit the button on the remote.

I was making dinner and feeling like a fool that I let my anxiety get the better of me that afternoon. What was there to worry about? What if she had gone to her mom's that day? I know she would be safe there, would be loved, would be fed, would be warm. What does it matter if she receives those things here, or receives them there?

Seneca said "True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”

I have to remember and hold this in my head; content in my lot, not amusing my self with hopes or fears, but satisfied with what I have.

Bob Marley captured part of this sentiment in his song "Three Little Birds."

Don't worry 'bout a thing

'Cause every little thing gonna be alright