What, Me Worry?

I am a worrier. Not to be confused with a warrior, which I'm realizing lately is the complete opposite. I've always sort of embraced my worry as part of the culture in which I was raised. In my family, you showed how much you cared with the frequency and volume of your oys, and with the number of check-in phone calls you made, and with the number of times you felt somebody's keppellah who said he felt a little chilly. Worrying always made me feel very Jewish (which I like) and very close to my mom (which is also nice).

Recently (around the time he told the Hitler joke that I so thoroughly enjoyed), my boyfriend told me his mom is a worrier, and she will figure he's dead if he doesn't call back for a couple days. I'm like, homie, you don't know from worry! You get a couple of days before she calls the morgue; I get a couple 15 minutes. He also said his mom was very relieved to find out I was a worrier too, because she felt happy to share the burden of her worry over her son who lives in another state. She asked, would I come over if he was sick to take care of him? And I'm thinking, do you know how much Emergen-C I can fit in my Mazda3 hatchback?!

Anyway, I can learn from the blue-eyed guy, who can be rather zen when he wants to be, and who does a lot of yoga, and who doesn't really worry or brood like I do. (Did I mention he got hit by a truck a few years ago?! A TRUCK! Hit! On Pico Boulevard! And he was unconscious in the ambulance! And then kind of got over it and moved on after he got released from the hospital, and now doesn't worry about getting hit by another truck, which I now worry about because he told me that story, like, exactly one time.) (Hit by a truck, oy oy oy!!)

I watch myself set these worry traps for myself and get caught in them. (This is particularly tricky for me since I work at home; it's a lot of time alone with my snowballingly funky head space when I get in a rut.) I watch myself pick at a molehill (albeit, maybe, a kind of substantial molehill) until it becomes an unclimbable mountain. Until I'm like, I've read Into Thin Air, I know how this ends.

But the fact of the matter is (and I know this from dutifully reading my DailyOm): it ends however you want it to end. The only thing to fear is fear itself, and what not. So you know, it's a matter of self discipline (which I know I have, since I get through all those "Brand New Booty" classes at the gym--ouch!), and pulling back a bit from the worry, and maybe changing my mindset about worry being kind of a cool, productive, Jewish community-building thing.

Nu? Discuss.