AFRICAN WISDOM FOR WORRYING TIMES – JUN 2009

The strange thing about us is that we so often forget to enjoy ourselves. We get so caught up in worrying when worry will not change anything.  We become so anxious about outcomes and results, deadlines and certitudes that we cannot live without them.   Late in his life Mark Twain said; “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”

“I sat under a tree one day with an old man in the Sudan.  He sat for a long time and then said, ‘You know the problem with people who run around is they can’t wait for things to sort themselves out. They look at the earth and say, do this. They look at a problem and run around it, but the universe will handle the details because nature unfolds perfectly without us. If we trust and let go, the magic of what is inside will work’.  I think the old man was right.  Sometimes we get so caught up in our own edition of reality that we lost contact with what is actually happening. We need to be constantly awoken into mystery, surprised by joy.  (All Will Be Well, Michael Meegan, Eye Books, 2004, p.47.)