Voboril: Meta fretting
Worry trails me like a stalker, patient enough to strike when I am most vulnerable. As a conscientious parent, business owner, son, friend, partner, there are infinite avenues of potential concern. Innately predisposed to fret, an inheritance that I struggle to disown, the tension is recently exacerbated by the disorientation engendered by the systematic dismantling of our country by a cabal of hypocritical lunatics.
In a world in which the bedrock is crumbling, my parents are aging, my daughter has entered her teenage years, my friends are being sandwiched, my clients are struggling, it is all too easy to get pulled into the abyss of paralyzing doubt. To function, one must engage in a rigid dissonance, carrying on each day with the bolstering fiction that everything will be alright, even if escaping unscathed is an impossibility.
A lack of belief causes hesitation of sufficient intervals to trigger missteps that would otherwise be easily avoided. Sliding uncontrolled down the firm couloir of apprehension, imagining worst-case scenarios about as unlikely as me achieving cold fusion, tomahawking in a repetitive cycle of absurd postulations, it is critical to self-arrest, dig in that whippet, and regain the bootpack.
There is nothing productive about worrying 鈥� certainly, it is no way to reach any desired summit. Each day is marked by potential landmines, ready to explode, but concentrating on the dangers instead of the task at hand is an abject waste of time and energy, not to mention that we tend to walk in the direction that our eyes are pointed. This is why we focus on the trail and not the trees, lest we have an unfortunate encounter therewith.
Being mindful of risk is useful, being absorbed by every potential permutation of disaster is not. I am all too aware of my penchant for worrying and this recognition has allowed me to craft strategies to put down the concerns that do not serve me. Requiring a lot of introspection and rewiring of habits, it has been beneficial work that has unlocked a feeling of freedom a long time coming.
Support Local Journalism
However, now that I have reached this epiphanic stasis, I wrestle with an unforeseen foe that is as pernicious 鈥� the self-flagellation that comes from worrying when I know full well that I should not. Fretting about fretting is perhaps even worse than the base worry, an unnecessary cycle that undoubtedly sidetracks me without any potential benefits. At least giving thought to potential threats allows one to figure out how to avoid them. There is no commensurate advantage to worrying about worrying too much.
Theoretically, this meta fretting can spin violently out of control. What about fretting about fretting about fretting, the task in which this column is currently engaged? What about fretting about fretting about fretting about fretting, a funhouse mirror of worry that has no logical end, a psychedelic journey of boundless despair?
Transcribing that image into print, to give the idea life is to see its folly. Regarding it with the benefit of literary distance, it is so easy to laugh at the sheer fragile humanity of it all. I will only start to really worry if I cannot chuckle at the roadblocks that I build for myself, if I become unable to see through the mirage of perfection and cannot guffaw heartily at the lost idiot at the core.
It may take tremendous energy to fight against the gravity creating a vortex of meta worry, but I believe wholly in the magic of the upward spiral.
T.J. Voboril is a founding partner at Alpenglow Law, LLC, a local law firm, and the Owner/Mediator at Voice Of Reason Dispute Resolution.聽For more information, please contact him at 970-306-6456, tj@alpenglowlaw.com, or visit .
