It's hard not to worry, even when we know how pointless it is. Worry can make us mean-minded with our families and rude to strangers. And we’d love to be able to stop. Remember that old smash-hit song, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”? Singer Bobby McFerrin’s voice was velvet and honey. His message was simple, the lyrics sweet. The world went for it like a tabby at a brimming bowl of milk.
Ever since our ancestors wandered the planet with a few primitive tools and their babies on their backs, humans have been very good at fretting. Will we get to shelter before the storm breaks? What beasts lie in wait over that ridge? Can we trust the tribe in the next valley not to attack us?
When life was short and brutal, worrying wasn’t just natural, it helped you survive. It was smart to worry if, as a result, you were pushed into doing something that might save your life – like cross the river NOW, before that storm up in the hills sends a flash flood your way.
Now that life's more sophisticated,you’d think we’d be worrying less. But we keep right on doing it. nWhy is that? After all, we don’t fear starvation, at least not in the western world. If we break a limb, it can be fixed. If a heart begins to fail, science may be able to save it or implant another. It is rare to die in childbirth. Antibiotics cure infections. Clean water gushes at the turn of a tap. Supermarkets burst with more food than our forebears could ever have dreamt of.
And yet, still the world seems fragile. Still we fear that all this safety and security is an illusion. That our comforts may yet be swept away, leaving us wretched. nEach recent decade has acquired a label. The 1970s were tagged the Me decade, the eighties the Greed Decade. The nineties could well be called the Wired Decade. And now we’re in what feels like the Worry Decade.
It seems that more technology roars ahead, the less ‘wired’ we are becoming to ourselves and to the earth. Having lost touch with its natural rhythms, we are feeling nervous and even downright fearful. Which is odd when you consider that life expectancy is pushing upwards all the time. Our great-grandparents counted themselves very lucky to make three-score years and ten. You and I could well live to be a hundred. Scientists tell us that may not be at all unusual when today’s babies grow old.n nYet we do not find this comforting. Awash in the torrent of change, most of us are feeling ever more unsettled. Worry about economic turmoil, family, health, crime, education, pollution, diminishing resources, changing weather and shrinking ice caps does not abate.
And yet as I sit at my laptop, the window before me looks out on a lush screen of trees. The sun backlights each leaf, making beautiful, intersecting patterns of light and dark, which earlier today I did not even notice when I was cursing my computer for its failure to behave.
The sun rose this morning as usual. Tonight, if I look up, I may see the moon, just as I did last night. The great wheel of each day keeps rolling on as it has always done. No matter what our small (or large) worries, the natural world will still be there tomorrow, obeying its own laws. Life goes on. We say those three apparently trite words so often that they’ve become a cliché. But they are huge and worth taking to heart. Life. Goes. On. nSo if today is a worrisome day for you, take the time to get out of your workplace or your car. It need only be for a minute or two. Go outside. Breathe. Take a moment to notice the miracle of being alive, today, now. If it’s warm enough and you can find a park or garden, take off your shoes. Feel prickling grass or silky sand beneath your soles. Close your eyes. Listen. Hear some of the buzzing, fluttering, humming natural noise that goes on all round you every day, mostly unheeded or overlaid by engines, sirens and horns. Give nature just a tiny span of such attention and it can talk to you. n nWhat it says will depend on what you need right now. Because, just like you, the world has many moods. But you will find one you need to hear, just as in reading a book or listening to a song, you can resonate to the message of just one line. nNature may not be vocal but its signs can be quite clear. A sturdy tree might be saying "don’t worry, just stand strong". The glitter of light on a summer sea might be hinting "don’t worry, just dance". A flock of migrating birds might encourage you, too, to pack your bags and leave for somewhere better. Even storms have their uses, saying "yes, it’s okay to blow your top when you need to clear the air".
And sometimes, nature just IS. One of my favourite trees grows on a city street corner that I know too well. I see it often as I sit in my car at an intersection, waiting for the green light so I can push on home. The tree is hemmed in with poles and wires and its feet are buried in concrete. Exhaust fumes bathe it in noxious fumes every time a new wave of vehicles pulls away. Some graffiti maniac has had the temerity to spray-paint its bark. nDespite all this, its shape is pure and lovely. Its trunk bends this way and then that in perfect balance as it rises above ugly store fronts, and then its branches extend outwards before sweeping up to an elegant point. It pleases me season after season, that tree, whether cloaked with leaves or stripped winter-bare. As I sit in the car, day after day, with bad news spilling from the radio, I see the tree and it keeps on showing me its stoic beauty. ‘Don’t worry’, it says. ‘Ignore the mess and noise. See how I keep thriving in this world.’ It tells me that we can thrive too.n