Why can't I stop sweating the small stuff?
Why can't I stop sweating the small stuff?
By: Bill Mead
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Posted by editor Tue Nov 30, 1999 00:00:00 PST
Viewed 579 times
0 responses 0 comments I never have been good at knowing what to worry about. For some obscure reason I tend to go bonkers over things that aren't worth a tinker's dam while I mostly ignore the really bad stuff.
I suspect most people get their priorities twisted like this once in a while, losing sleep over aggravations they can't remember two days later, but I'm sure I'm worse than most people. Don't you think it's bizarre that for the past couple of weeks I have been lying awake trying to figure how to get the dead battery out of my old SUV? Meanwhile, I don't give a thought to the consequences of my cholesterol and blood sugar readings that should scare any sane person silly. See what I mean about losing all sense of proportion?
In my own defense, the car battery is driving me nuts because the junk that holds it in place is rusted and crusted to the point where no tool on earth seems able to loosen it. I know you mean well but don't tell me about squirting everything with Liquid Wrench. I've gone through half a can of the stuff without budging anything. I'm still lucid enough to know that a hacksaw could solve the whole mess but then I would have to jury rig some Rube Goldberg apparatus to fasten the new battery in place. I keep hoping that a few more sleepless nights will bring inspiration and I won't have to invent a new way to keep a battery from bouncing onto the road. And don't ask me to explain once more who Rube Goldberg was. You're too young to understand.
The fact that I can't arrange problems in order of importance has always baffled my wife, notably during the years I was allegedly running the Tehachapi News. As just one case in point, when I should have been wracking my brain to come up with a scheme for meeting the next payroll she would find me agonizing over a crack in the cover of the toilet tank.
This peculiarity of mine (I don't think it rises to the level of madness yet) has forced me into a great deal of introspection. Why do I sit up wide-eyed until after midnight, terrified that I'm coming down with leprosy when it's only a case of dry skin? Then when I'm faced with having my coronary arteries replaced, I sleep like a baby, relieved that the outcome is some doctor's problem.
I have thought a lot about why I suffer from this quirk. I still haven't figured it out completely but I have come up with one interesting theory. I call it Mead's Law of Constant Anxiety. Now that my wife and I are retired and remarkably free of most of the downsides of getting old, I have come to realize that all living persons contain within themselves a fixed level of anxiety that needs to be released in an orderly fashion. Heavy duty problems, like serious illness or financial ruin, tend to drain our reservoirs of anxiety almost instantly, causing us to become fatalistic which in turn is apt to make us quit worrying. So nature, determined that we should never feel totally at ease, decrees that we should fuss more about trivialities such as stuck batteries. This will ruin our sleep but still leave us enough anxiety to have a cow about other things as well.
I'm sure you agree this is a brilliant finding on my part. Do you smell a Nobel Prize coming my way?
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