When we use the word "worry" what do we mean? The word comes from the old Saxon, and was in imitation of the sound caused by the choking or strangling of an animal when seized by the throat by another animal. We still refer to the "worrying" of sheep by dogs—the seizing by the throat with the teeth; killing or badly injuring by repeated biting, shaking, tearing, etc. From this original meaning the word has enlarged until now it means to tease, to trouble, to harass with importunity or with care or anxiety. In other words it is undue care, needless anxiety, unnecessary brooding, fretting thought.
What a wonderful picture the original source of the word suggests of the latter-day meaning. Worry takes our manhood, womanhood, our high ambitions, our laudable endeavors, our daily lives, by the throat, and strangles, chokes, bites, tears, shakes them, hanging on like a wolf, a weasel, or a bull-dog, sucking out our life-blood, draining our energies, our hopes, our aims, our noble desires, and leaving us torn, empty, shaken, useless, bloodless, hopeless, and despairing. It is the nightmare of life that rides us to discomfort, wretchedness, despair, and to that death-in-life that is no life at all. It is the vampire that sucks out the good of us and leaves us like the rind of a squeezed-out orange; it is the cooking-process that extracts and wastes all the nutritious juices of the meat and leaves nothing but the useless and tasteless fibre. -- George Wharton James, excerpted from Quit Your Worrying!
To cease from worrying is sound advice, but I'm worried that I'm not going to be able to follow it.
6 comments:
I think it was when dabbling in cognitive therapy two decades ago that I began to stop even using the word "worry" outloud and inhead. A better word, or rather, a word most people actually mean when they use "worry" is "concern", as in, "I'm concerned about...". Which means (at least when I use it) to convey that some proper degree of my attention has been placed on this or that. If you use worry all the time, I think, it serves to some degree to convince you that you are the worrying-sort.
Yes, very good point. That's one reason this definition struck me as useful. We do not clearly distinguish between fretting and worrying and simply being concerned and attentive. If something needs attention, we ought to attend to it.
I know a few people who probably wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they stopped worrying.
Snort Out Loud!
Worry is definitely scalable.
Yes, and what a lot of those chronic worriers really like is to get other people involved.
They want to have a worrgy.
Really, that should be a word.
worrgy. I'm gonna steal that.
We have a close family member whose main occupation is worry, almost to the exclusion of all else. Sucks the life out of all in the vicinity.
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