When I was but a lad, it occurred to me that my Mom and her Mum (my Nan) used to spend a lot of their time worrying about just about, well, everything.

They seemed agitated and having not a lot of fun.  Money was tight.  Their husbands were unreliable and prone to drinking the small amount of cash that by some miracle filtered through the universe to our family.

These were women of the war and inter-war years, of the depression, of the post-war boom that carried the wealth that seemed to elude them nicely.

They wore cotton printed dresses, drank tea and got down to sharing some rather serious worry.

This went on for years.

Worry ranged from imminent financial doom, the travails of bowling club politics (she said this…. and then I said …. and she said …….) to seeing life as a precarious lurching from one medical condition to another.  There were women’s issues, one gathers – a mystery to me to this day.  And there was a myriad of other actual, imagined or looming corporeal disasters that were expected to yield to the might of modern medicine.  Defeating polio was the triumph.  Lesser terrors were a walk in the park.

But the unifying theme was worry itself.

It took me some time to start to think about what worry actually was and once I had started to ponder this valley of shadows, with the unbridled optimism of youth, I started to question the point of bothering to worry – in the face of so many actual and potential disasters – about which, the harbouring and nurturing of anguished concern would do absolutely nothing.

Hardly any point as far as I could / can see to worrying – as a futile act that merely immerses one in spirit-sapping decay.

Worse, I think was the realisation that so much previous worry had been about events that never materialised.  Worse than futile.

I did discuss these views with Mum – who could see the rational argument that worry was a waste of time and energy – time and energy that would be put to better use by actually doing something.  If money was a concern (as it was), perhaps getting a job in the post-war boom of the late 50s and 60s was a very workable and eminently sensible alternative to worrying about poverty.  Yep, she could see the sense in that, but it took her until I was nine to act on the issue.

Well, it was really the issue that she had to find some economic base in contemplating divorce from a man who in all probability might have been bipolar, but who had the more socially acceptable excuse of being merely a weekend drunk.  The tipping point was when he made a silencer for his .22  and pointed the gun at her.  My uncle – who had a car, showed up in a hurry, exchanged some stern words with Dad (I could just about hear the shouting from my temporary safe haven at the neighbours’ place).  Uncle removed the bolt from the gun and took it with him – for safe-keeping.  He was a wonderful bloke, my uncle.  Calm, collected, generous, funny – and a real man’s man.  He solved most of our extended family’s worries and stayed friends with everybody.

But Mum didn’t have to worry for much longer – about Dad, anyway.  She got a job, secured some independence from him and we were ready to hit the road when Dad was diagnosed with Type II diabetes.  He was in hospital for weeks while they stabilised him and sorted out his insulin regime.

Off the grog, and with his diabetes under control, he became something like the man that Mom had married.  And for ten years they enjoyed some kind of reconciliation and gentle poverty together.  Mom worried about his meals – and the timing and I guess she got her revenge in a very subtle way – she bored him to death with his diet.

But to return to the point – worry.  What actually IS worry ?

One can rationalise it as a build-up of anxiety – perhaps based on powerlessness in the face of adversity – real, impending or even just imagined adversity.  And one can see, I guess that it’s pointless and counterproductive for good health and well-being, but it seems nearly impossible to not worry to some extent at least.

What parent has never lain awake waiting for their teenager to return from the party where we know there will be risks of alcohol and other drug abuse, of non-consenting sex and other violence ?  What parent has ever felt worry-free when their children first took the keys of the car on their own ?  What parent ever went worry-free when it was one of their own children going off to war – or on a rather more positive part of life – giving birth to the first grandchild ?

So what is to be done about worrying ?

Nothing, mate.  She’ll be right  ?  I wish !

Next Instalment – Doing Something Positive – Mindfulness