Causes of Worry : Part 1

Quit Your Worrying!
by George Wharton James

(Page 7 of 25)

Worry is as multiform and as diverse as are the people who worry. Indeed worriers are the most ingenious persons in the world. When every possible source of worry seems to be removed, they proceed immediately to invent some new cause which an ordinary healthful mind could never have conceived.

The causes of worry are innumerable. They represent the sum total of the errors, faults, missteps, unholy aims, ambitions, foibles, weaknesses and crimes of men. Every error, mistake, weakness, crime, etc., is a source of worry - a cause of worry. Worry is connected only with the weak, the human, the evil side of human nature. It has no place whatever in association with goodness, purity, holiness, faith, courage and trust in God. When good men and women worry, in so far as they worry they are not good. Their worry is a sign of weakness, of lack of trust in God, of unbelief, of unfaithfulness. The man who knows God and his relationship to man; who knows his own spiritual nature and his relationship to God never worries. There is no possible place in such a man's life for worry.

Hence it will be seen that I believe worry to be evil, and nothing but evil, and, therefore, without one reclaiming or redeeming feature, for it can be productive of nothing but evil.

If you really desire to know the sources of your worry study each worry as it comes up. Analyse it, dissect it, weigh it, examine it from every standpoint, judge it by the one test that everything in life must, and ought to submit to, viz.: its usefulness. What use is it to you? How necessary to your existence? How helpful is it in solving the problems that confront you; how far does it aid you in their solution, wherein does it remove the obstacles before your pathway. Find out how much it strengthens, invigorates, inspires you. Ask yourself how much it encourages, enheartens, emboldens you. Put down on paper every slightest item of good, or help, or inspiration it is to you, and on the other hand, the harm, the discouragement, the evil, the fears it brings to you, and then strike a balance.

I can tell you beforehand that after ten years' study - if so long were necessary - you will fail to find one good thing in favor of worry, and that every item you will enumerate will be against it. Hence, why worry? Quit it!

Worry, like all evils, feeds on itself, and grows greater by its own exercise. Did it decline when exercised, diminish when allowed a free course, one might let it alone, even encourage it, in order that it might the sooner be dead. But, unfortunately, it works the other way. The more one worries the more he continues to worry. The more he yields to it the greater becomes its power. It is a species of hypnotism: once allow it to control, each new exercise diminishes the victim's power of resistance.

Never was monster more cruel, more relentless, more certain to hang on to the bitter end than worry. He shows no mercy, has not the slightest spark of relenting or yielding. And his power is all the greater because it is so subtle. He wants you to be "careful" - taking good care, however, not to let you know that he means to make you full of care. He pleads "love" as the cause for his existence. He would have you love your child, hence "worry" about him. He thus trades on your affection to blind you to your child's best interests by "worrying" about him. For when worry besets you, is harassing you on every hand, how can you possibly devote your wisdom, your highest intelligence to safeguarding the welfare of the one you love.

Never was a slave in the South, though in the hands of a Legree, more to be pitied than the slave of worry. He dogs every footstep, is vigilant every moment. He never sleeps, never tires, never relaxes, never releases his hold so long as it is possible for him to retain it. When you seek to awaken people to the terror, the danger, the hourly harm their slavery to worry is bringing to them, they are so completely in worry's power that they weakly respond: "But I can't help it." And they verily believe they can't; that their bondage is a natural thing; a state "ordained from the foundation of the world," altogether ignoring the frightful reflection such a belief is upon the goodness of God and his fatherly care for his children. Natural! It is the most unnatural thing in existence. Do the birds worry? The beasts of the field? The clouds? The winds? The sun, moon, stars, and comets? The trees? The flowers? The rain-drops? How Bryant rebukes the worrier in his wonderful poem "To a Water Fowl," and Celia Thaxter in her "Sandpiper." The former sings of the fowl winging its solitary way where "rocking billows rise and sink on the chafed ocean-side," yet though "lone wandering" it is not lost. And from its protection he deduces the lesson:

He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone
Will lead my steps aright.

And so Celia Thaxter sang of the sandpiper:

He has no thought of any wrong,
He scans me with a fearless eye.

And her faith expressed itself in a later verse:

I do not fear for thee, though wroth
The tempest rushes through the sky:
For are we not God's children both,
Thou, little sandpiper, and I?

There is no worry in Nature. It is man alone that worries. Nature goes on her appointed way each day unperturbed, unvexed, care-free, doing her allotted tasks and resting absolutely in the almighty sustaining power behind her. Should man do any less? Should man - the reasoning creature, with intelligence to see, weigh, judge, appreciate, - alone be uncertain of the fatherly goodness of God; alone be unable to discern the wisdom and love behind all things? Worry, therefore, is an evidence that we do not trust the all-fatherliness of God.

It is also the direct product of vanity, pride and self-conceit. If these three qualities of evil in the human heart could be removed a vast aggregate amount of worry would die instantly. No one can study his fellow creatures and not soon learn that an immense amount of worry is caused by these three evils.

We are worried lest our claims to attention are not fully recognized, less our worth be not observed, our proper station accorded to us. How we press our paltry little claims upon others, how we glorify our own insignificant deeds; how large loom up our small and puny acts. The whole universe centers in us; our ego is a most important thing; our work of the highest value and significance; our worth most inestimable.

About the Author

George Wharton James (1858 - 1923) was a prolific popular lecturer and journalist, writing more than 40 books and many articles and pamphlets on California and the American Southwest. James was born in Lincolnshire, England. He was ordained as a Methodist minister and came to the United States in 1881, serving in parishes in Nevada and southern California.