This weekend, I heard myself say to my brother, Jon, “Worry is lazy, it’s just laziness of the mind.” The cherry on top was when I followed it with something along the lines of, “Worrying about worry is really fucked up.” So helpful, I am. What I wanted to say was a bit different. And because the universe has a sense of humor, from the second I said “worry is lazy,” I was given an opportunity to take a closer look at the ruminations of this thing we call the mind, the beautiful thought-generating machine we all have, programmed by our experiences, doing it’s thing until we die.

I’ll start with turbulence. Friday, I took Kalvin to Wisconsin to visit Jon and his family. On Sunday, my eldest niece turned nine, it was the second year in a row I have been there for her birthday. On the flight home yesterday, our plane hit some unexpected, rough, ugly turbulence. The kind of turbulence where your heart ends up in your throat, you hear the collective intake of breath, you see the big burly tattooed guy across the aisle tighten his seatbelt, make rapid genuflecting motions, and grab the arm rests. I was no different. Some time ago, I made the very stupid mistake of reading about plane mishaps while on a small plane that was twitching and dipping and dropping and spinning, a four-seater from Chicago to Springfield, a thirty-minute flight or a three hour drive. I should have driven.   Yes, the plane was doing the vertical dip that makes me happy for seatbelts as I feel the canvas catch against the top of my thighs. But the plane was also pitching, yawing, rolling, and heaving. This little plane was having a dance with every axis at the party. If you ever wanted to instill a phobia, I’m quite sure my tactic would make the list.

That said, I’m not afraid of flying. I understand why a plane stays in the air. I just really hate turbulence. Hate it. I try to tell myself that my racing heartbeat and shallow breath will serve me well if I have to run fast, away from some predator or burning plane. I try to welcome the feeling of adrenaline rushing through my body, telling myself it will help me function if I’m injured. It doesn’t help much. Yesterday, when the plane started doing it’s thing and the pilot immediately decelerated and the dings started conveying something to the flight attendants and the initial collective gasp waned, this is what I heard: “Weeeee!!!! Woah!!!” followed by intense laughter from my two-year bear cub, aka, Kalvin. “Woah. Weee, yipeeee!!!” he said and threw his hands up in the air. “Again! Again. Again!! Momma, again!” His excitement covered up my string of profanities. “Momma!!! I want to go. Again!!! Weeeee!!” I looked over at the burly man whose eyes were wide with anxiety but whose mouth had cracked a grin under his curly beard. That’s when I laughed and released the white-knuckle grip I had on the armrest, as if it could save me in the very unlikely event that the plane did go down. 1 in 11 million. I looked it up recently. The odds of dying in a car accident are 1 in 5000.

Which brings me to today. Our nanny and her husband live on our property. On his way to work this morning, Jay was second on the scene of a fatal car accident. It was gruesome, and the few details conveyed through Katie have wedged themselves unwelcomingly in my head.  I cannot imagine what it must have been like for Jay. I cannot believe how many lives were irrevocably changed. I cannot believe it happens everyday, all day. But what I really can’t stop thinking about, can’t stop ruminating about, can’t stop worrying about, is the little girl. The nine-year old girl, stuck in her seat laying against the dirt with the car on its side. Jay tried to free her but couldn’t. He talked to her instead while they waited for help to arrive. All the little girl wanted was her Mom. She just kept asking for her Mom. Her Mom was ejected from the car. Her Mom decidedly did not survive the accident.

I thought of my niece Kate who just turned nine. I thought of Grace sometime in the future. And then I shut down my computer and went up to the house and took Grace swimming in the middle of the day. In the swirl of laughter and chaos at the pool, I honed in on my little girl, on her joy, or her courage, on her curious sense of people, on the way she said, “I don’t like that man,” on the way she was drawn to another man whom she playfully splashed between big silly flirty grins. I honed in on the way she climbed the stairs to the water slide by herself, sat down, and pushed herself into the flow solo, and came up kicking and smiling. I honed in on the way she throws herself under water and tries to swim. She’s two. She can’t swim. On the way she climbs out of the pool, “Hand, hand, elbow, elbow, knee” she says to herself, before standing and hurling herself back at me.

The worry, the trauma, the thoughts that would not stop about the accident seemed to highlight the perfection of the moment. The awful rumination provided fertile ground for the perspective shift that always makes life come alive, makes priorities myopically crystal clear, and seems to provide a giant valium for the worry by showing me exactly what is important. There is very little to truly worry about.

But more importantly, so much more important is this: who cares? So I worry. So my brother worries. The worries and negative thoughts are just products of the thought machines that are our minds. So what? Those thoughts only matter if we give them energy. If we hold on to them. If we try to fix them. Because judging ourselves for having them, well, that’s like rolling out the welcome mat, baking fresh bread, and just begging them to stay. Worrying, negative thoughts, they are all normal parts of being a normal human. Some people just get more involved than others in those thoughts. That’s what I meant by worry is lazy. It’s not the worry that destroys us, but our tendency to give in, to intertwine and intermingle and tangle and conflate our identity with the product of the thought-generating machine.

Dan is the master of not doing this. He simply does not give those thoughts any energy. “I don’t want to hear about,” he’ll say. “I’m not reading about that.”

“Doesn’t this bother you? Doesn’t that bother you?” I ask.

“I just don’t think about it. I’m good at compartmentalization.”

I used to think he was right. But compartmentalization implies the thoughts are still there and he’s just choosing to focus elsewhere. I think it’s the opposite. I think because he doesn’t give them any energy, because he chooses, with discipline, to focus on something else, the thoughts dissipate, they move on to more welcoming guests, the ones with fresh bread. The most clear-cut relatable example is how he deals with his ex-wife. I could write a book about her antics, but not Dan. “Whatever, it’s just noise,” he says and turns his attention back to me, to Kalvin, to Grace, to our life. And that’s it. He won’t let her take his energy, his thoughts, or one second of his life. No matter what.

This is what I know, our minds create some pretty fucked up things. They also create absolute beauty, curiosity, poetry, scientific breakthroughs. They create both extremes. Everyone’s does. Everyday. To varying extent. So what? That’s the mind’s job. It’s not you, mine isn’t me.  It’s just a thing in the universe, a program, that creates thoughts, some good, some bad, based on the input we gave it in the past. They come and they go. Unless we hold on. Unless we think we can’t handle them. Unless we are not ok with what our minds and heart create. Then we need to go out into the world and fix it, fix people, fix situations, fix the them, fix ourselves, fix the thoughts, fix it, so that we can be ok again. That’s when life gets complicated and ugly and reactive. The thoughts we can’t handle, they run our lives, they drag us into wars that drain our vital energy. Sort of like choosing to engage an enemy that hasn’t seen you and is just passing by, an enemy that will sap your energy, distract you from your life, rob you of precious moments, make you sick, and leave you a sad, heartsick, strung out, fragile, anxiety-ridden mess of an excuse.   Instead of letting the enemy pass on by, we stand up and say, “Hey you, over there, I’m interested in you, what are you doing, where are you going, what’s happening?”

“Worry is lazy.” What I should have said was, collapsing into worry is lazy.

What I should have attempted to explain is something I’m still understanding myself, there’s a profound difference between being confident enough to handle your internal world and needing to change the outside world to make the inside ok. Instead, how about just experiencing both? How about living the knowledge that we are here to see and to experience. It’s a tree, it’s anger, it’s a painting, it’s a soccer game, it’s worry, it’s windy. So what? I am the one who sees what is outside, I am the one who sees what is inside. I am the one who sees. I am the one along for this human ride. I am the one just seeing.

Just see.

Just seeing.

Just seeing one beautiful thing.

It’s a trick, the title of this blog, it’s really failing but pretending to pass at the same time. Just see. Just see what’s there. Worry. Confusion. Love. Joy. But for this mere mortal who cannot always sit in witness consciousness, I back it up with a practice of gratitude and a practice of looking for one beautiful thing, so that if I do conflate me with my mind, at least I’m helping create a more pleasant product, for myself and the people around me.

There’s my confession, Jon. Lazy, perhaps. But I’m right there with you. I’ve just created a few backup systems to help out now and then.

PS, disclaimer, credit due alert – I have read and listened to Michael Singer, author of The Untethered Soul, so many times, his words have become imbedded in my thoughts. His fingerprints are all over this post.