Today, a tweet from user @haloemjoieffect on X.
worrying really is like worshipping the problem
I can’t find the original source for this adage, but the tweet was how I first encountered it — and it’s really stuck with me. Like the Didion essay from the past two days, there seems to be a high usefulness-to-length ratio here. A lot is captured in the comparison, but most important to me is the self-reinforcing nature of worry.
Our mental patterns are prone to feedback loops, and worrying a little can easily turn into worrying a lot. Let this feedback pattern spiral for long enough, and even the most trivial of problems (whether or not they can be fixed) can become a central feature of our lives.
There’s one solution indicated here, as far as I can tell, and it’s choosing not to worry (or at least insofar as the costs of worrying won’t be outweighed by the benefits of any solutions the worrying may produce — and usually, they won’t be).
To quote an even older adage, the serenity prayer (which has a surprisingly recent, and secular, history):
May I have the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.