The Havamal: A Heathen Path of Living (Part 12)

23.

Foolish is he who frets at night,

And lies awake to worry'

A weary man when morning comes,

He finds all as bad as before.

The great thing about this quote is that its pretty self-explanatory. Who of us hasn’t laid awake at night worrying about some possible future or ruminating about something from the past? Did anything change from that lack of sleep? Probably not. Did you find things even more difficult to deal with the next morning thanks to a sleepless night? Probably so.

What I really like about this quote is that this is one example of how humans have been struggling with the issue of anxiety and worry for millennia. An ancient culture living in northern Europe felt it necessary to write down advice against worrying. In Matthew (6:26), Jesus comforted the crowd when he said, “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” This means that anxiety and worry aren’t just the products of our modern American life, but must be hardwired into humanity as a species.

As far as we know, humans are the only species that understands the concept of the future. Most animals are concerned if their current needs are being met. If they have food and water and aren’t currently being chased by something, then they are doing fine. They don’t have a concept of the future so they can’t conceive of running out of food or water. However, humans do know about a future so we can conceive of things going wrong at some point in the future. We also have a powerful capacity to remember the past so we can remember things going wrong before and make the assumption that they will go wrong again. This leads humans to worry about what might happen in the future without any capacity of knowing what will really happen.

So, if we are so predisposed for worry that even ancient texts tell us to avoid it, then is there anything we can do to stop worrying? Well, one way to start is to be more like other animals and live in the moment. Consider what is going on around you at the moment. Are you safe? Have you eaten and are you healthy? In therapy, I teach my clients techniques to keep them grounded in the moment as a means of avoiding unnecessary worries. Another tactic is to think about what you have and be grateful for those things. It is easy to focus on what you don’t have. But, when you focus more on what you do have, then you’ll find many things in your life are more manageable.