Parable About Worry

Joe is a typical guy that has what most of us aim for.  In his shoulder are the success and power of his career, a luxurious lifestyle and a wonderful family, that we cannot think of anything else we can worry about except that Joe doesn’t think the same.

Joe still worries about a lot of things.

• He worries about his project that’s connected to his promotion;
• He worries about how he can multiply his current income;
• He worries about the scholastic achievement of his first son;
• He worries about winning the golf tournament;
• He worries about his wife cold treatment when he stays up too late working;
• He worries about the island he wants to purchase;
• He worries about getting the presidential position of his business club;
• And his list of worries just keeps on going on.

Then one day, he got sick of severe hypertension that he was hospitalized for a week.  While in the hospital, Joe continues to worry especially now that he couldn’t perform his usual routines.  The doctor noticed such “worry behavior” of Joe that he thought of something to make his patient stop worrying or at least minimize it.

With an idea in his mind, he went into Joe’s hospital room.  He told the patient that he has severe disease that he’s left with a year to live.

Surprised and saddened by the news, Joe’s initial reaction was to again worry until the reality sink in to his head.  He realized that he have a lot of things he wanted to do but he haven’t done so because he have been busy working and making a living. He has worked so hard thinking that he wanted to provide all the good things for his family.

Now that he’s left a year to live, he started to think of living his life instead over making a living. He finally understood that living a life only comes from simple things, like a picnic with his family, travel to places, playing with the dogs or even attend to family gatherings, which he didn’t think were important as it is now that he is dying.  And as he started to live his life, slowly all his worries fade until months passed that he do not see them as relevant like before. His dying was like a blessing in disguise for him to start living.

Are you like Joe?

Well, Joe is like the many of us.

When a worry knocks at our door, we have the tendency to entertain it and let it sit in our favorite spot but even before we know it, it’s already there, crawled at the window and made itself at home.

Living with our mind worrying on the future causes us to miss out the greatness of now. By living and worrying too much about the future is not living at all because we can only live at a single time, which is now.

Do we really need death to remind us about living today?

Death may visit us at anytime and life is a very precious gift just to waste in worrying. They are just a product of our uncontrolled imagination. One of the keys in eliminating our worries is to taking control of our thoughts.

According the law of averages, what are the chances that the things we are worrying about will ever happen?

Worrying never give us any answers, it is only good in asking “What ifs?”

What about you? If you are going to die tomorrow, what are the things that you want to do now?