My mind amuses me sometimes. Yesterday, for example, driving on the highway at about ten miles over the posted speed limit, I heard a scratching sound coming from the passenger side of the car in the front quarter, accompanied by an occasional "squeak". By the time I got where I was going I had completely convinced myself that a squirrel was either A) in my glove compartment or B) sitting on my engine and clinging to life. Neither thought made me cheerful. I actually considered, for a mili-bleep, opening the glove compartment as I was doing 70. The impracticality of this move, thankfully, did occur to me. I mean, hell...what if I was right and it fell out? Or even just grossed me out?
I controlled myself until I got to my destination, went to the outside of the car (maybe it was a branch stuck underneath?) and was relieved to see that it was only my front fender, working its way free again, as it has so often since being first pounded by a car door flung open into it as I drove by, and a year or so after we repaired that one, creased by a guardrail in a dark parking garage. With a modified karate kick it was back where it needed to be, and tormented me no more. Until the next time.
Which brings me to my point: Why do I manage to manufacture the weirdest scenarios out of the simplest situations? I have wasted more time in my life worrying about things that never happened than I care to think about. We all do, to some extent, but I have made it into a creative art form. Someone (I have no idea who, but whoever it was is brilliant) said: "Worrying is like sitting in a rocking chair. It's something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere." I love that. My other "worry quote source" is the Dalai Lama. He says that worry is a waste of time. "Either it's something you can change, and you use your energy to change it, or it's something you can't change, and you use your energy to accept it." Someday when no one is looking I am going to swap him for the Pope. Meanwhile, things I never saw coming continue to sucker punch me and lay me low, but I suppose that's life. Now for a cup of coffee and a bit of quiet time so I can listen to the voices in my head....
I controlled myself until I got to my destination, went to the outside of the car (maybe it was a branch stuck underneath?) and was relieved to see that it was only my front fender, working its way free again, as it has so often since being first pounded by a car door flung open into it as I drove by, and a year or so after we repaired that one, creased by a guardrail in a dark parking garage. With a modified karate kick it was back where it needed to be, and tormented me no more. Until the next time.
Which brings me to my point: Why do I manage to manufacture the weirdest scenarios out of the simplest situations? I have wasted more time in my life worrying about things that never happened than I care to think about. We all do, to some extent, but I have made it into a creative art form. Someone (I have no idea who, but whoever it was is brilliant) said: "Worrying is like sitting in a rocking chair. It's something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere." I love that. My other "worry quote source" is the Dalai Lama. He says that worry is a waste of time. "Either it's something you can change, and you use your energy to change it, or it's something you can't change, and you use your energy to accept it." Someday when no one is looking I am going to swap him for the Pope. Meanwhile, things I never saw coming continue to sucker punch me and lay me low, but I suppose that's life. Now for a cup of coffee and a bit of quiet time so I can listen to the voices in my head....
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