The Sentinel, Life of a worrier 210424

      In case you read the title and surmised the word was warrier, it is worrier, just one letter different, but a whole different world.

      I have lived most of my life always worrying about everything. If there was nothing to worry about, I invented a potential crisis to pump up my worry machine. Let me see here, I worried about my parents finding fault within me, something might happen to my daughter, Joyce might realize that I was not the man she really wanted to live with for the rest of her life. I worried about losing my job. I worried about getting into trouble no matter where I was job wise. I worried about being a failure at my work. I worried that people wouldn’t like me, wouldn’t accept me. These things I have mentioned are just right off the top of my head this morning and if I sat down and started making a list of other things; this post would be even longer than it is. I believe by this point you get the general idea.

      All of that said above has been in my past. That is until the last few months. I am slowly crawling out of that dreadful hole I lived in for years, decades. The day I raised my hand and took an oath of enlistment in the navy was the day this all started, September 4, 1963. Prior to that point I never had a care in the world, never dreamed I could fail at anything. I could and would succeed at anything I wanted to do, despite my grades in school, despite not really being good at anything. Looking back today I realize that contrary to the facts in my life, my brain up to that point was conditioned by my dear mother to think that I was handsome, intelligent, and could accomplish anything I wanted to do. Navy boot camp showed me I was not all that I believed I was before. There were more worldly, more intelligent young men that I was.

      It’s only taken me 75 years to learn who and what I am. I can live with that. To quote a song lyric from our now departed Ricky Nelson’s song Garden Party, “you can’t please everyone, so you gotta please yourself.” I believe that Yoga and meditation has led me to a realization of things as they are and not necessarily what I might like them to be.