What Nature Can Teach Us About ....Worrying

Worry runs in my family.

"Be careful!!!" was the shrieking clarion call in my house growing up. My mother was constantly fretting about my sister and me. She worried endlessly, literally wringing her hands as we bounded out of the door and into the fields to play Power Rangers^^ or to find and capture cats in the neighbourhood (we weren't allowed a cat), or just to go to school, which was 15 minutes walk away.

^^Power Rangers, in case you didn't know, was a '90s TV extravaganza of questionable martial arts, awful dialogue, and extremely gendered spandex (pink for the girl, because: obviously). It also had an extensive merch range, because what’s a children’s TV show without the requisite consumerism for corporate profits? Just watch TV without being sold a matching lunchbox, action figure and duvet cover? Don't be silly.

Due to all the hand wringing, calls of "Be careful!", and visible relief on my mothers face when we returned, my sister and I grew up thinking the world was unsafe and treacherous^^

^^'Unsafe and treacherous' in really bad ways like being kidnapped, falling into a ditch and breaking a leg, or being run over. Not 'unsafe and treacherous' like the world actually is, what with nitrates in the drinking water, poisonous glyphosate in our breakfast oats, the ongoing and worsening threat of geopolitical destabilisation due to climate breakdown, war and so on...

My sister and I have both struggled with worry, anxiety and overthinking in our lives. It's one of the forces which led me to pursue work helping others in this realm, leading me to sit here writing this right now. Er, yay?

Worrying is normal and fine, ok?

I still worry. And, despite what a subsection of the psycho-spiritual personal development crowd may say— the ones who think we can transcend the human condition and all of our, y'know, feelings — worrying is very, very, very normal.

Worrying ios also pretty healthy, too, in a world that has lost the effing plot. That is, a world that organises itself around an extractive, growth-obsessed economy, relentlessly tearing down and destroying life itself to make shitty bits of plastic no one needs (like a potty for toddlers with an ipad holder attached). Oh, and bombs.

But it does feel crappy

Worrying does rather suck, though, doesn't it, and there's no need to pretend otherwise. Worry can scoop us up into its tornado and keep us whirring around in there, disorientated and fretful. Worry is pretty shitty when we are engulfed in its foggy, frenzied updraft.

But although it feels like it will last for ever, Nature assures us it won't. Worry also seems kinda...well...useless and pointless and futile and stupid? Wasteful, you might say? But, again, Nature says we're wrong about that.

Ok, Nature, over to you.

Nature says: look at leaves in a river, you dorks

Worry is a bit like leaves drifting down a river.

Think of a river flowing gently through a forest. I'm going to think of the Buller River winding through forest in the beautiful Kahurangi National Park. What are you thinking of?

The water carries leaves, twigs, and other natural debris downstream (and maybe the odd Coke can - darn litterbugs! Grrrr) . Some leaves get caught in eddies or stuck to rocks, but eventually, the river's current sweeps them away and they are back on their journey.

Worries are like those leaves. It's natural for them to be there, in the river of your mind. They generally come and go but will sometimes get quite stuck 'in the eddies'. You'll then fixate on them and it seems like they'll never go away..... It's like staring at a leaf caught on a rock, wishing for it to detach. It's going to unstick in time. But staring at, wishing it to unstick — as in, fretting over your worries and wishing them away — will not change the current or direction of the river. You'll just feel quite rubbish in the meantime.

Nature teaches us that the river flows best when it moves freely, without obstructions. We humans are also Nature (a fact that if remembered, honoured or deployed in our life would make things a lot easier and nicer). So it follows that we function best, like the river, when able to move freely.

Our minds function best when we allow worries to pass through without clinging to them.

The annoying bit where it seems like I'm gaslighting you

So, here's the bit where people will say "instead of resisting or trying to control our worrying, we can observe and acknowledge that worried thoughts are present, and then let them drift away with the flow of our thoughts"

Or

"Allow your worries to drift downstream, trusting that the current of life will carry them away"

Which is great, if you can. But that's not always available to us and a lot of the time, we'll be fixating on that leaf stuck to the rock. We'll be swirling with worry no matter what.

...but I'm not

And that's exactly perfect. Because worrying is an integral part of our human experience. Worries have wisdom. They can guide us toward what matters to us, helping us to prioritise our values and make changes if we need to. Sometimes.

And sometimes they just suck.

We don't have to enjoy the experience of worry. It can be totally squirmy and uncomfortable and icky. You don't have to remember that worries have wisdom, or that worrying is natural or normal, or anything like that.

You might be totally consumed by your worries, and your mind will be whirring and clanging and sliding all over the place, and you won't think of leaves on a river at all^^

^^Or you might indeed think about leaves on a river and BAM! Now you're worrying about the river, and the health of all of our rivers, and all of the water, and what about pollution and dying trees and climate breakdown, and, and, and...

Whatever is going on for you, the river of life is moving you anyway.