Nothing to Worry

embrace it

Fear. 

There's a lot of noise inside my head about this lately.

My brain wants to constantly construct imaginary but terrifying situations for me to experience. Of course, this most often occurs in the middle of the night, when everything is quiet and all is well but why am I doing this?  I know I'm not alone. Most people, when we told them we were going to sail to Mexico with the kids, gave us a laundry list of things to worry about. What about storms? What if someone falls overboard? Is Mexico safe? What about missing work and pilot season? What if someone gets sick or injured when your miles offshore?

I know. It's scary. I ask myself these questions and more, on a continual loop...

But why are we all so afraid all the time? It seems most of us, as we get older, make many of our decisions based on what we are afraid of, instead of what we WANT.

You know who didn't ask any scary questions when we told them we were going to sail away?

Sailors.

Even knowing that we had only limited experience and that were taking our young kids with us, people who had actually done what we are doing, we're unanimous in saying "GREAT! GO! GO NOW! HAVE FUN!".

I think the big difference here is that when most if us venture into new territory, we simply don't know WHAT to expect, so naturally most of us fear the worst. 

Sailing gives one a different perspective on this, because you can prepare but you can't avoid the fact that you will just have to deal with whatever comes up. You HAVE to be self-reliant. Sure, we look at weather reports, check our charts, make sure all our gear is in good shape and Old Perkie has been pampered accordingly but we have to accept that if it turns to shit, we will have to bear up and get through it.

But that's exactly what happens in everyone's life, anyway. Isn't it? We all get thrown into "bad-weather" and "gear-failures" in our own way. Financial woes, heart-ache, accidents and, yes, even death happens. So, what's the difference out here?

There isn't one. 

It's just an illusion we create in our "regular" lives that we are safe from danger, or pain, or fear.

So that noise in my head, is just that. Noise. And as it serves no purpose other than to distract me from my bliss, I have developed a little mantra to counteract it.

But first let me tell you where the Mantra came from:

When Hunter was a toddler, if all went suddenly quiet in the house, Jon and I knew trouble was brewing. One time, the silence was deafening, so Jon snuck up the stairs and discovered Hunter dressed in nothing but  diapers and a pair of my black stiletto boots. She had one of my purses in her hand and her brother's Indiana Jones bullwhip in the other. Needless to say, the picture was pretty shocking for poor daddy. Hunter looked at Jon with the most sanguine look a two-year-old can muster and said, "Go away, daddy. Nothing to worry..."

So, "nothing to worry" has become a saying of ours.  It means; you never know what to expect and since being afraid won't make it not happen anyway,  you might as well relax and smile.
It's what Jon says to me when it's blowing 30 knots and one of the kids accidently kicks the autopilot 45 degrees off course and suddenly we go from having full sail up and running comfortably downwind to almost knocking ourselves down on a close haul. We scramble around and fix the situation and once all is calm again, Jon looks at my jet black and dilated pupils and say's. "Don't worry baby, nothing to worry." 

And I believe him.