Cut the crap! - On how to overcome worry

This morning after I woke up and was getting ready for the day I felt some tension coming up. It was the same tension I had been feeling regularly the past months and had been trying hard to get over. I thought to myself: 'Oh no, not again. Why is this tension here? It should not be there. Not after all this time and all this effort. What on earth do I have to do to get rid of this?'

All these thoughts and more flashed through my head in mere seconds, all similar to the thoughts I had been having the months before. 'Ok, just relax. But what if that does not work. What if I am just trying to run away from it?'

But then another thought came to my head. Yesterday I was reading about the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa, about how it is completely out of control and how the whole health care, in fact whole countries are falling apart.

And then I thought: 'Gee, these guys have something to worry about. And look at me, still worrying about the same silly thing, some tension in my body. Is that it? Is that all you got? Is that all you have to worry about? Gee, what the fuck is wrong with you?' (Pardon my French, but that is exactly how I thought it.) 'This is not "mindfulness", you are just worrying, just afraid about, about... about what? About frigging nothing! But, but but... No buts, just stop it! Cut the crap! What the hell is wrong with you? Act frigging normal.'

You know, it is funny how our mind works. If we have a certain idea, and we are stuck in it, it can be so hard to get out of it, no matter how silly the idea might be. As long as we are in it, it seems so real, so important. Only if we manage to get out of it, we realize that it is not important at all, that it is actually... well, quite ridiculous. In fact, we wonder and even feel embarrassed how we could ever have been caught up in such a stupid thing. It is like when you fall in love with someone and then he or she dumps you, and after the initial despair you realize this was not the guy or girl for you at all and you wonder how you could ever have gotten so carried away.

It is like our mind always wants to cling on to something. Even if there is nothing wrong, and we have everything we need and even if we live in a beautiful place like I do, then still, our mind wants to find something to start ruminating on. Our mind is like an excavator, continuously making mountains out of molehills.

And you would think that one would come to a Buddhist practice center to find a haven of peace and quiet, where there are no worries at all. But then when you realize you are worrying just as much there, about even more insignificant things, then you know that that might well be the actual reason places like this exist: to see how your mind works, to see how stupid you really are, and to... well yeah, to just cut the crap!