Busy, protecting you

I am a worrier.

If you believe in nature over nurture, I worry because my father and by mother are both apprehensive and it’s engrained deep within the double helix that is my DNA.

If you instead believe in nurture versus nature, I worry because I have seen my concerned parents wring their hands over small and not so small incidents all my life.

If you believe in astrology, I am a worrier because I am a Capricorn, and that’s what Capricorns do besides being sure footed and having a singleness of purpose.

I worry all the time. I worry that something is going to happen to someone I love, or that something is going to happen to me. I worry Luca will hurt himself playing soccer and that my family is not safe in Mexico City. I worry if a friend expresses anything less that ecstatic joy. I worry that we forgot to close our garage door.

If, according to my own beliefs (expressed with vehemence in my recent blog entry “people do”) people really can change; and according to my most recent blog entry about New Year’s resolutions a New Year’s resolution can graduate into become second nature, then that means that I can decide to stop.

My New Year resolution for 2007 could potentially be “worry no more.”

And if I say “but, it’s who I am” then I’m doing the very thing I rage against in my entry “people do”. I’m throwing in the towel. Turning my lazy back on the nearly limitless power of human potential.

So why is it hard for me to even consider letting go of something that could be making me sick?

Because I believe that if I worry about something I can worry it out of existence. I believe that most things I worry about won’t happen precisely because I worry about them. My worry is a protective shield, an undetectable force that swirls around the people that I love and accompanies them wherever they go like a halo on an angel’s head.

And the fact you probably think that is ridiculous doesn’t worry me at all.