Anxiety has never been judged as a positive emotion. It is linked with everything that is worthy of being discarded — nervousness, worry, stress and many more. People with the anxiety syndrome are not too difficult to detect either.
They are tense, edgy, have a nervous look about them and they display a giveaway sometimes. Like nervously biting their nails, or even chewing a handkerchief. For them, life is a series of worries; will their child come back safely from school, will their children pass in their exams this year, do you think the maid is thinking about quitting her job?
And the worries are not just about the todays. They stretch into tomorrows and the days after. Will the children find suitable life partners, will the spouse remain faithful to them when they grow old, what happens if they contract a life threatening disease?
In contrast, there are the what-me-care types; the people who have never known a worry. They go through life blithely, having never known what a crinkled frown is. You may think that such people are darned lucky. But pause awhile and consider the baggage that such an attitude brings.
They never review their lives, never look back in introspection — let alone in anger — they just coast along from day to day. Is this the correct state of bliss to be in? Certainly not.
So you will realise that sometimes what we perceive to be a good state of being is also fraught with a lot of pitfalls. If the worrier is caught up in his thoughts and cannot break away from them to carry on with constructive endeavours, the what-me-worry folk may not be doing any mid-course correction at all and may go on from blunders to disasters.
Contrary to what we are led to believe, the worrier therefore may actually be sometimes better off than someone who never worries. The ideal situation would of course be to have a blend of both; to worry just a little, not overtly.
Unfortunately, it is the worriers that are always noticed, not the never-worry folks. Only those close to the latter know that beneath their self-assured facade may lie a lifetime of errors.
What does one do to stop worrying all the while? For starters, one should consciously limit one’s worrying hours. Instead of getting vexed all the time, it would be a good first step to curtail worry time to say, an hour at a fixed time. That would make the person conscious of his tendency when his mental circuitry gets into the loop.
Snap out of it and wait till the appointed hour. I find this method more effective than telling people to put a blanket ban on putting on their worry caps.
And what should those people who are without a care do? They should stop believing that they are in a state of bliss. It is time for them to wake up and get real about their life and routine. As I say, it is time to take a close look in the mirror.