Matt Heath: Don’t worry, be happy

Matt Heath insists we shouldn't worry. Photo / 123rf

OPINION:

There’s a lot of bad stuff happening in the world at the moment. In the last week alone I’ve spent significant time worrying about nuclear war, ram raids, social division, interest rates, government spending, rain, cancer, lice, the City Rail Link, Super Rugby crowd numbers, AI, child literacy and whether or not it’s pretentious to write unqualified wellbeing columns in the national newspaper.

There is too much information in the world for one man to bear. We only have so much mental bandwidth; if we hold too many concerns, other things in life will suffer. You could lose sight of the important stuff. Like spending carefree time with your kids, partners, parents, friends and dogs.

That’s why I have decided not to worry anymore. To just stop. Every time something concerning pops up, I’m choosing not to stress about it.

This is not giving up on life. You can stop worrying while still working hard to improve the lives of yourself and the people around you. It’s about doing all that without spinning your wheels on every stupid issue that arises. Generally, it doesn’t do anything to help.

Ask yourself, how many of the things you have worried about actually came true? Almost none. To pick a superficial example: when I was 22, I was sure I was going bald. It consumed me. It’s over two decades later, and I’m still running the same big greasy, messy mop. That was a foolish waste of time. Especially considering I would have been fine either way. My friend Leigh Hart has no hair and the dude is doing very well for himself.

Worrying does little to improve your future while doing a lot to ruin your present. As a child, I was terrified of nuclear war. I assumed we would all be dead by now. That didn’t happen. I wasted a lot of precious time worrying about it but zero time doing anything to prevent it. We fear the violence we see on the news and social media but most people in New Zealand rarely experience it. The great Roman statesman and philosopher Seneca wrote in a letter to a friend: “It is likely that some troubles will befall us, but it is not a present fact. How often has the unexpected happened? How often has the expected never come to pass? And even though it is ordained to be, what does it avail to run out to meet your suffering? Perhaps it will come, perhaps not; in the meantime, it is not. So look forward to better things.”.

If that thing you are worried about happens, who’s to say you won’t get through in the same way you have survived until today? Instead of worrying, you could choose to back yourself. Assume you will have what it takes to face the challenges tomorrow brings. Marcus Aurelius put it this way: “Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”

If we let it, our cerebral cortex will continually simulate the worst possible outcomes. We evolved to survive not to be happy. Freaking out over everything that comes your way is a waste of life and cognitive ability.

It’s a great time to be a human. Our ancestors faced far worse than we do today. Take food. For most of human history, famine was a yearly risk. Crops would fail and your family would die. As Yuval Noah Harari wrote of the modern world: “In our societies, more people are in danger of dying from obesity than starvation.”

The humans of history would laugh at our concerns. It’s a great time to give up worrying.

You may be thinking, all this is just Bobby McFerrin’s 1988 hit Don’t Worry Be Happy, stretched out to 750 punishing words. You might be right. He summed the idea up much more succinctly: “In every life we have some trouble. But when you worry, you make it double. Don’t worry, be happy.”

The point is, we are being fed an endless stream of concerning things. Let’s not waste the best years of our lives worrying about them. Instead, we can choose to let most of it wash over us while we lean into the good stuff right in front of us.