Kidnapped by worry?

Escape plans considered…

I often worry. Sometimes it feels like I can’t escape it.

‘I am so worried!’ I say and quite believe this to be so. ‘And haven’t I every reason to be worried? Look at these circumstances!’

Worry seems somehow inevitable. Like a dark cloud passing across the sun, a worry clouds my psyche, and I begin to hallucinate, imagining the worry is me.

Yes, I somehow seem defined by it; it has taken over. I move from noticing a concern passing through me to the sense that this is who I am: I am this worry!

By now, I’ve been well and truly kidnapped by this emotion.

Though I am not this worry. Like most distressing emotions, it is a distant memory acting up, a childish panic resurrected – latching on uselessly and damagingly to present circumstance.

Cracked bells are jangled, old ghosts stirred; but they don’t come to help.

The deeper truth is that I am peace; that is who I am.

Perhaps I can arrive there today for a moment, letting the worry go, releasing it into the big sky. I let it pass through me like a charmless visitor greeted but now asked to leave.

And so I arrive back in reality.

Peace…our truer identity.