FREEDOM FROM WORRY

In the Yoga tradition there are four kinds of busyness. The child is busy with play; the youth is busy with pleasure; the adult is busy with worry, and the yogi is busy with bliss, liberation or freedom. Why, as adults, do we spend so much of our time in worry? Perhaps it's because, again, as adults, we feel so much responsibility. We feel as if everything rests on our shoulders— that if we don't make things happen, nothing will happen, or if we don't hold everything together, it will all collapse. Yet the universe has been continuing for aeons of time and will continue for aeons of time, with or without our fierce concern. There's an old Senegalese saying, "If we worry, tomorrow will come; if we don't worry, tomorrow will come." The remedy for worry seems to be trust: trusting ourselves that we will do what we need to do when we need to do it: trusting others to do what they need to do when they need to do it: trusting the universe and life itself to do what it needs to do when it needs to do it. Since it's all running itself anyway (including us) perhaps we can release our worry and let it be.