I'm Worried

In the Scriptures, we are told not to worry. That's a therapeutic enjoinder if there ever was one. Anxiety, whether low-grade or raging, is corrosive. I suppose worry can have its positive effects, like helping us to focus when the stakes are high. When operating a chain saw, for example, it might help to imagine, briefly, the cost of an error. Most of anxiety, though, is yucky--a bona fide sector of human misery that we should, if we could, toss into an incinerator. I don't think of myself as a worrier, but I do feel a bit of it now. In part, I know what it's about, but not 100%. Some anxiety, I think, is a correlate of physiology--maybe I ate too many fresh strawberries or drank too much coffee (though great volumes of coffee feel pretty normal to me). Though I worry a little today, I'm glad for the Biblical advice--no, the command--not to do so. How wonderful, how needed, is the greeting and wish of "shalom." The hippies got one thing right, at least. Peace, everyone.