I’ve been going through a recent bout with hardcore worrying over my health. I’ve had a few problems pop up recently, some stomach pain and an ugly mole¹, and so, logically, I’ve been worrying that I have some sort of cancer and that I’m going to die within a week. Which is clearly illogical, even total nonsense, and I know it. There’s an awful lot of things that can cause stomach pain, and an ugly mole can just be an ugly mole, rather than melanoma. Yeah, I tend to imagine I have the worst possible thing whenever I have health problems…

Knowing these things hasn’t helped in silencing my mind, though. My brain just keeps going through the same thought patterns over and over, and I’ve not had much luck in shutting the lump of grey matter up. The list just keeps looping – what if I’ve got a terrible illness, what if I’m going to die soon, what will my family do when I do, etc. When it reaches the end of the list, it just starts over.

It’s become rather tiresome, actually.

And of course, the real kicker is, even if what’s up with my mortal coil is serious – well, what’s worrying going to help? No one ever got better by worrying. In fact, if I don’t have some form of cancer or other terrible disease, sitting around worrying constantly will certainly push me towards having one. It’s goofy, really. And like I said, I know it’s goofy. I just don’t know how to stop it. When I’ve caught myself running the “Let’s Worry About What Might Be Wrong With You!” reruns in my head, I’ve tried to stop it by focusing on other things, but it hasn’t worked very well. It just leads to a tension in my head, a tug-of-war between the part of my mind that says “forget about it” and the part of my mind that screams “no, we must worry about it, now!”

I’ve also tried my standby, being mindful of the worry: looking at it in a detached matter, seeing how it manifests itself in my body (tense chest, slightly creased forehead, prominent frown), and seeing where it goes. It either gets better, gets worse, or stays the same². It gets better more often than it gets worse, but being mindful all the time is harder than it sounds, so I’ve still spent a lot of time in the past few weeks in worry mode.

I’ve been this way, a worry-wart, for as long as I can remember, but it’s reached new heights now that I’ve had to visit a doctor multiple times. Up until now, I’ve never had any health problems at all. No hospitalizations, no broken bones, nothing. Alas, health problems happen, and after seeing my internal responses to this crop of them, I’ve gotta’ say: I don’t want to keep doing this worrying nonsense. It’s no fun for me, and more importantly, it’s no fun for the people around me, because when I’m in Worry Mode (TM), I’m grumpy.

I’m not really sure what I’m going to do about the problem at this point. My family tells me “Just relax, stop worrying, you’re going to worry your life away” – okay, but how? Brute mental force directed at the worrying thoughts doesn’t work, at least not very well, nor does thinking about the issues logically. Where’s the little switch in my head labeled Worry, and how do I turn it off?

Maybe I’ve got a bit of OCD going on; maybe it should be brought up at the next doctor’s appointment. What say you lot?

1. Removed today, actually, and so now I just have to wait to see what the lab’s verdict is; the dermatologist seemed pretty confident it wasn’t anything to worry about.
2. This is something that Gil Fronsdal has pointed out in many of his talks, which I listen to via Zencast. It’s comical the way it sounds, but it’s true. Pain and emotions will always do one of these three things when you observe them mindfully.

But Wubi isn’t the point here.

After reading the MetaFilter post, I clicked over to the Wubi site and downloaded the installer. I started the installation process (which takes quite a while, due to it having to download an Ubuntu ISO), and left my computer for a few hours. When I came back, I rebooted and selected Ubuntu. It didn’t work. It hung at a line saying something about finding menu.lst. I rebooted, selected Windows, and immediately got to digging in the Wubi support forum, trying to solve the problem. I’d spent half hour, maybe 45 minutes, doing this before I paused and thought…

Wait a second – why am I doing this?

You see, I’ve installed Ubuntu in the past. The “correct” way, the standard way, by making a couple of new partitions, then booting from an Ubuntu install CD. It’s not that hard at all. I ended up removing Ubuntu because while it worked quite well, I still found myself in Windows XP more often than not – old habits die hard. So why in the world was I spending time trying to figure out how to install Ubuntu with Wubi?

Umm… I guess I just got caught up with the flow of “wow, this is a neat idea!” and kept going with it. I never stopped to think, why am I following through with this? Why am I going beyond just reading the post, nodding, and saying “Hey, that’s pretty neat”?

It’s easy to get dragged down into the current, of just running with whatever your brain thinks is appealing. The problem with that, of course, is that our brains have a massive (I’m talking enormous) case of ADD, and if we grab on to everything it labels as appealing, we’re never going to really be in control.

Try to break the cycle. If you catch yourself jumping into something new (or old) without really thinking about it, ask yourself why you’re doing it. It’s entirely up to you as to whether your response validates your actions or leads you to stopping – but just make sure you have a response. It sucks to burn up a an hour or two of time, and only then think, “What in the world did I do that for?”

I thought 25 minutes would be more than enough time to get my breakfast and still be to work on time. It only takes a few minutes to go from my home to Tim Hortons, and then another few minutes to get from there to the university.

When I arrived at Tim Hortons, however, I found huge line of cars in the drive-thru. I momentarily weighed my options: park and go in (which might have been quicker), or pull into the line of cars? I decided on the latter, remembering that when I had previously parked and went in, it actually wasn’t much quicker, because all of the workers were busy with the drive-thru.

The Shifting of the Mental Gears

As I pulled into the line, a slight shift in my mind took place, a clinking of the gears. Was I going to be late for work because of this huge line? I had left the house early enough, hadn’t I? Certainly I did, and if I was late, the blame would lay on these people in front of me taking too long to order, the workers taking too long to prepare those orders.

As I sat there, I could feel the minutes slipping by. Each car ahead of me seemed to take somewhere near half a decade to place their order, pull up, get their order, and leave. What was taking so long? I was going to be late to work because of this!

I then had another slight shift in my thinking; I realized this was all of my fault. If I hadn’t slept that extra 20 minutes, I could have made coffee at home, saving myself the trip to Tim Hortons. It was my fault that I was going to be late for work, it was my fault that I was going to perhaps be in trouble with my boss, having to have a “talk” with her about my being late. It was my fault that my day was going to start out terribly.

Just How Late Am I?

Finally, after what felt like a compact century in line at Tim Hortons, I had my bagel and coffee in hand. I pulled out of the lot into the traffic (which seemed to be moving far too slow for me), and headed towards the university. Of course, on my way, I had to run into every red light. That was my luck this morning, wasn’t it? “Overslept, stuck in line for an eternity at Tim Hortons, and now I’m behind these damnable red lights!” This did give me a bit of time to quickly eat my bagel (not enjoying it much due to my haste), but this is something I didn’t appreciate much at the time. I hate being late.

I finally pulled in at the parking lot, doing a haphazard job of parking the van. I got out, my bagel a hazy, unenjoyed memory, my coffee and bookbag gripped in nervousness. As I walked up the sidewalk to the library, I wondered: just how late am I? Half an hour? 45 minutes? I imagined a crowd of people around the reference desk, demanding help, which I was not there to provide. (This, of course, despite the fact that in all of my time at the reference desk, I have never had a “crowd” demanding anything.) I imagined walking in, with the eyes of my boss and coworkers falling on me, as if to say, “You’re late, and you’re going to pay for it.” I knew it was going to be a miserable morning.

The Truth

I walked into the outer hallway of the library, reached for the door that would let me into my doom, and pulled. Click. It was locked. How could that be? I was late. Had they decided to just not open because the reference assistant wasn’t there on time to help the clamoring crowd? For that, I was sure I’d be fired!

No. Of course, as I’m sure you have already realized, I wasn’t late. On the contrary – I was actually still a bit early, by at least 5 minutes. I had left the house in plenty of time, and while the line at Tim Hortons had been longer (and slower) than usual, it wasn’t that slow.

And yet I had made the last 20 minutes of my life, which felt more like a day, extremely miserable for myself. How? By telling myself stories in my mind, and believing them. As I became more nervous, more upset about being late – which wasn’t reality to begin with – the negative thoughts just snowballed. Damn the people in front of me for taking too long; damn the slow workers; damn the red lights; damn myself for sleeping too late. I even felt some physical discomfort, because as my nervousness increased, so too did my pulse, and most likely my blood pressure. All of this by telling myself a story, and taking that story as truth.

Lessons Learned

What then, does this tell us? It tells us that we need to pay very close attention to our minds, and what they’re brewing around the clock. The saying “the mind has a mind of its own” holds a great deal of truth. Our minds spin tales constantly, often without our realizing it, and if we’re not constantly vigilant (to borrow a phrase from Mad-Eye Moody), we can easily fall into the trap of basing our actions on stories that are out of alignment with reality, with how things really are. If I had just realized that I most likely wasn’t late, and even if I were to be late, it wouldn’t be that bad, I could have saved myself a good deal of inner suffering.

Which brings me to the end of this post, and to these questions: are you suffering somewhere in your life? Is that suffering due to reality, or due to a story you’ve told yourself, or one that you’re still telling yourself? Would life be better if you’d just see things as they are, rather than how you think they are?