The Worri-Some ME!

I sit here in the office late in the night I ponder, what makes us unhappy? As we grow we carry an illusion of what we ought to be. A perfect picture we dream of, we fantasize about. Things seldom fall in to pieces and all of a sudden we are in situations we never dreamt of before. Life’s not a bed of roses for sure. Some people argue that the very uncertainties of life make it worth living. They argue it’s not the happening itself but rather how we deal with it that’s important. How true! May be these are only the people who overcome all this.

As in one of his books Worry by Edward M. Md Hallowell, says plants and animals don't do it. Worry is a human "skill." And it comes in different forms. Some kinds indicate diagnosable conditions, such as depression, or Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Others, such as shyness, are built in from birth, and some seem plain old existential--stemming from broken trust or loss of faith. But worry is uniquely human. "To create worry," Dr. Hallowell writes, "humans elongate fear with anticipation and memory, expand it in imagination and fuel it with emotion. The uniquely human mental process called worrying depends upon having a brain that can reason, remember, reflect, feel, and imagine. Only humans have a brain big enough to do this simultaneously and do it well."

Is having such a brain that costly affair that people fall in to depression, suffer heart-strokes and when it becomes un-controllable commit suicide. The author further says we worry because we have this sense of “loss-of-control” as if we don’t have the power to control our surroundings.

Controlling our surrounding, now how easy is that. For some people surroundings offer conducive environment to thrive and for others it’s overwhelming. In overcoming unsympathetic situations lies the strength of character. That’s so hard to develop and so easy to be preached about.

I remember Al Pacino, in “Scent of a Woman” when he said this …Now I have come to the crossroads in my life. I always knew what the right path was. Without exception, I knew. But I never took it. You know why? It was too damn hard…

So how important are life choices are. The decisions you make that will ultimately make the difference where you end up. Not all of us make the right decision at the right time. And not all of us learn from the wrong ones either. There are ways to defend our own wrong doings, our self-defense mechanism works indeed flawlessly to give us that feel-good factor.

I sit here and think about my own state of affairs. Wonder about how my friends are doing at this juncture. Friends from school, from college, acquaintances, and relatives so on and so forth. Why is success so relative? Aren’t the parameters of being successful different for all of us? We can’t be compared on a universal scale !

Recession is looming large. People are still confident “By the third quarter of 09’ things will be better”.. “Worse is over” they say things to make you feel better. GDP growth rate for this quarter is down to 5.1% , A 4 % plunge from its peak. That necessarily means we lost 8 million jobs so far. And what if things don’t improve?

Yea! It will make us all worried!