Mother's Day and The Art of Worrying

Mother's Day is a mixed bag of goods when your Mama is deceased. I can't even pop in to visit her final resting place. It is thousands of miles away. Instead, I focus on the place in my heart where she will rest till the end of my days and lives on unencumbered by a minor little thing like the termination of her earthly existence.

Mother's Day is a funny thing when you do not have children of your own. Fortunately, it is understood by husband, friends and family alike that I still qualify for adulation on this particular day - after all, my numerous fourlegged companions receive healthy doses of mothering, too, as do a few of my two legged beloveds.

Now, it may sound as if I sit around on Mother's Day and think sad and melancholic thoughts. Woe is me! I do not. It is what it is. It'll be what it'll be. Some things are meant to be and some are not. On Mother's Day, I enjoy sending my mum loving thoughts, and I enjoy feeling a little special and like I have earned a day of adoration. I try to put all other thoughts and worries aside.

My mother was a Master Worrier. She was an expert on worst case scenarios, and she drove me bonkers with her concerns. I was always the opposite, the dreamer who thought only of best case scenarios, untill something horrible happened, then I descended into confusion and the antics of high drama. Excuse me!? Dreaming here!! How could this happen to me when I was just thinking such happy thoughts!!!?

After she passed, I did alot of regrouping, rethinking, reconfiguring. I also started worrying. I had finally learned that stories do not always have a happy ending. I began to think about things going wrong, awry, where I did not want them to go. Funnily enough, alot of things, big and small, went 'wrong' after that. I began to stress as never before. It became a habit, almost a drug.

No need to be bored, I can always worry.

I read alot of books, some of them quite strange. I talked to some wonderful people, some of them quite out of the ordinary. I made a conscious decision to grow and address this exhausting habit head on. And one day, in a moment of crystal clear clarity, I sat in all encompassing relief when I understood how useless worrying is. I understood the power of my thoughts to shape my wellbeing and my life. I understood that the train of life keeps rolling whether I worry or not, and so far worrying had brought me nothing but grief, so why not just drop the habit altogether - and trust. Try this on for size, I thought. Just DON"T worry, be happy - expect the best POSSIBLE outcome no matter what. Maybe I won't get what I dreamed, but then again - maybe I will find it is something even better.

I felt empty and strangely at a loss.

The moment passed and I immediately began to worry that if I quit worrying, things could spin out of control. Oh.

Lesson #2. Worrying is about control. What a strange and peculiar belief to think that if I worry, I can control....anything!

Since then, I try to catch myself. There is no better place to catch myself and find relief than in Nature. Nature does not worry. Nature deals. Nature sucks it up and makes the most of every day.

So that is where I went yesterday, camera in hand. That's where all these photos are from, my Mother's Day Nature Walk. I went out to take 20 pics, and two hours later I wandered home with some 324. I was playing with macrolenses again and while these could be even better if I had been using a tripod, I just wasn't worried about it. I figured some would work out well enough (under the circumstances, being I do not yet own a decent tripod). I was enjoying myself. I was happy, I was at ease, I was not worried, and I finally saw one thing clearly.

It'll be the best that it can be. Not only that. It will be the best that I allow it to be.