Why can the mind always find another reason to worry?
One thing you were worried about turns out well. For a while, you feel relieved. Then another possibility comes into view. The work may be secure, but someone you love could become ill. They may be well, but the money might not stretch. Even if those concerns ease, there are changes you have not thought of yet.
This does not mean the first concern was invented. It means that resolving it cannot make the whole of life secure. If peace requires reaching the end of everything that could go wrong, there is no clear point at which you are allowed to feel it.
In I’m grateful, Innocent acknowledges that seeing illness and death gives people real reasons to fear for their own lives. He does not answer by saying that such things will happen only to someone else. His question is what happens to living when those possibilities occupy the whole view.
A Spark from The Vision
If you look for them, you will find an endless list of reasons to worry and not be happy.
There is an important difference between responding to a particular concern and continuing to look for a reason not to feel at ease. A particular concern may have information to seek or something to do. The larger demand for certainty cannot be met in the same way. Finishing one preparation leaves other parts of life beyond your control.
It can be difficult to accept this while something good is happening. You are enjoying a conversation and suddenly think about losing the person opposite you. The possibility is real, but it has not become more immediate because you thought of it. They are still speaking. There is still something they wanted you to hear.
You do not have to prove that you will never lose them before their company can matter now. Nor must you turn the thought into an instruction to make this conversation unforgettable. An ordinary exchange is allowed to be ordinary. Its value does not depend on your managing to appreciate it perfectly.
The chapter turns towards gratitude from within uncertainty. What is good deserves attention partly because it is not guaranteed. This leaves the future open; it does not bargain with it. Enjoying someone’s company will not protect them from every harm, just as rehearsing their loss will not make their present company safer.
Some days contain more pain than pleasure, and being told to count what remains can feel like being asked to overlook what has happened. That is not necessary to this distinction. A real difficulty can deserve your attention without every possible difficulty joining it. You can grieve one loss without treating all that you love as already lost.
There may still be something requiring a response today. Give it the attention its actual circumstances call for. But the thought that another bad thing is possible does not, by itself, tell you what needs doing now.
You may never reach a day with no reason available for worry. There can still be a day worth living among those reasons: unfinished, unprotected from every possibility, and containing things you would miss if they were gone.
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AI-generated from Innocent Mwatsikesimbe's writing.
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