I never met my biological father. He died when I was in seventh grade.
My mother died when I was twenty three.
My step father died when he was sixty three.
I wonder what they would have thought about their son’s life had they lived to be in their seventies? Probably the same thing I now think about my children.
My parents probably would have worried about why I traveled so much. Just like I do with my own children. I still get a light feeling in my stomach when my children tell me they’re going to travel a long distance away.
What’s that all about?
There’s a repeating pattern to life. Children venture out. Their parents worry – no matter how old the children are, no matter how old the parents are.
I can remember when I left home at 19 to live in Argentina for two years. My parents worried about me traveling so far from our home in Southern California. Forget the fact that my father spent two years in the Pacific fighting the Japanese during WW2; and my mother traveled to Southern California from Utah at twenty three during the Great Depression of the 1930’s with no promise of a job.
Adventure and worry are part of the human psyche. We can’t not venture out when we are young, and we can’t not worry when we see our children venture out.
So is this what life is all about? Venture and worry? It does seem that way. But does worry make a difference. Maybe worry is a holdover from prehistoric times when Homo sapiens had to constantly worry about securing food, drink, and shelter, to say nothing of fighting off sabertooth lions. Constant worry caused the earlier version of ourselves to be constantly juiced up with adrenalin.
So worry is a primitive response from a time when worry was essential for survival. But is it essential for survival today? If you grew up with no sign of worry, you would probably be emotionally unstable. If nothing worried you, you would probably have unsavory behavior.
Not worrying as much as others is not the same as not worrying at all. In other words worrying is a quality of positive mental health and stability.
However, if you worry too much, that primitive response has stayed with you. Nothing you can do but accept it.
For me, if I had to tip the balance one way or the other, I’ve probably retained the overhang of worry. On occasion I’ve been caught not worrying enough. I’ve usually paid a price for it. But, more often than not, I over worry.
We worry because we are human. It’s left over from our prehistoric ancestors. They survived because they worried, and because they worried they survived the treacherous environment into which they were born. We are the ancestors of the worry trait.
So, we inherited the trait that is like inheriting your baby toe. You don’t necessarily need it, but you have it. Go forward, enjoy your life.