Don’t Fret

Don’t Fret

by Paul Kowalewski

The other day I got an email from a friend of mine thanking me for some advice I had given about how silly and useless it is to “fret.” It was a very timely email because I was right in the middle of doing some pretty serious fretting myself, and I thought it might be a good idea to take my own advice.

Some might say that fretting is just another word for worrying, but I actually think “fretting” is a more expressive word. The dictionary definition of the verb “to fret” is “to devour, to eat away, to gnaw at.”

When I get to worrying, this is exactly what happens to me — my worrying eats away at me, it gnaws at my body as well as my spirit. When I worry about things, my stomach churns, blood pressure rises, my thinking gets cloudy – worry “eats away” at me.

When I got that email from my friend the other day I was “fretting.” All the outside lights and garden lights on the side of my house had mysteriously gone out. I wasn’t sure if a circuit had blown or if there was a power surge.

Who knows, maybe there was some major electrical problem? So I started fretting over it – turning over all the possibilities in my mind, “fretting” over how much it might cost to fix, could it even be repaired?

I came across this little Buddhist proverb:

If you have a problem that can be fixed, then there is no use in worrying.

If you have a problem that cannot be fixed, then there is no use in worrying.

I have substituted the word “fretting” for “worrying” when I read this wise old saying. READ MORE

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