On Worry

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Worry is a riddle with no punchline.

It loops around itself like bindweed — the more you tug at it, the tighter it holds. It arrives early, stays late, eats all the biscuits, and never once helps with the sweeping.

I’ve worried about many things in my life. Most of them didn’t happen.
Some of them did — but never in the way I imagined.

Because worry is a liar. It offers you control in exchange for peace, and delivers neither.

You think that by imagining every outcome, you’re preparing.
But all you’re really doing is suffering twice — once in theory, and once in reality (if it ever comes to that). And most of the time, it doesn’t.

Worry is the illusion of readiness.

You wear it like armour, but it’s just heavy cloth — soaked with “what ifs” and dragging at your paws. You think it’ll catch you when things go wrong, but all it does is keep you from standing up straight while things are still fine.

It whispers, “If I think about it enough, I’ll be okay when it happens.”

But you won’t.
Because when the real hard things come — the big ones — they rearrange you.
Not with your permission. Not with notice.

They don’t care how much you rehearsed.

I’m not saying don’t be careful.
I’m saying don’t mistake rumination for preparedness.

You can’t solve the future by spiralling through it in your head at 3am.

You can only live it when it arrives. And when it does — you’ll have no choice but to meet it with what you’ve got.
And that will be enough.

It always has been.

— Ramson C. Badger
Overthinker | Tea-burner | Learning to let go of “what if”