Worried Sick About the Election? You Must Read This

No matter which side you're on, let me put your mind at ease.

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“The bad news is you're falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there's no ground.”

― Chogyam Trungpa

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“Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.”

― Signs and Symbols, Vladimir Nabokov

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“What, me worry?”

― Alfred E. Neuman

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It’s exactly 8.9 miles from my front door to my favorite hiking trail in the badlands of Newport Beach.

I miss the depths of the Covid lockdown when I could get there in just under ten minutes. Now, if I’m lucky, I can do it in thirty.

The drive there last Saturday was like any other, starting with an overabundance of inner dialogue from the moment I started my car.

Damn, I should have brought a water bottle. How stupid of me. I’ve done this hike a hundred times. How could I forget my water?

What if I’m halfway through the trail and get thirsty? What will I do?

My kids are going to community college—that’s all there is to it.

There’s no need to waste money on the first two years at a four-year school.

When they get a degree nobody is going to know or care that their first two years were done at community college.

Am I just rationalizing this because I didn’t graduate from college?

No, I’m being sensible. Pragmatic.

But what if they get into Harvard?

They’re not getting into Harvard.

But what if they do?

If they are smart enough to get into Harvard they will be smart enough to get a scholarship.

Where’s my pepper spray? I forgot my pepper spray.

What if I come across a mountain lion on my hike? I won’t have any protection at all.

Wouldn’t there be some warning signs if there were mountain lions on the trails?

What about that rattlesnake I saw? It was huge and blocked the trail. Yelling didn’t help. Neither did stamping on the ground.

I’ve heard that if you encounter a bear on the trail you should make yourself as large as possible and back away slowly but deliberately.

Would pepper spray stop a bear?

I could get dehydrated on the trail. Maybe at the furthest point, away from any water.

What’s wrong with me? I’m 57 years old and I can’t remember to bring water on my hike?

When did the inside of my car get so dirty?

That’s it, every Sunday I’m going to clean the car inside and out, no matter what. Start the week off on the right foot, that’s what I’m going to do.

I’ve got to get the Christmas decorations up early this year. If I don’t I won’t be able to enjoy them, and the next thing I know it will be New Years’.

Why didn’t I kiss Nicolle Simmons on New Year’s Eve in 1984?

I spent all night with her at the mall, celebrating with a thousand other Mormons. I could have kissed her. I should have kissed her.

Her father gave me an odd look that night. I think he knew I was secretly in love with his daughter.

God, what an idiot he must have thought I was.

Maybe I’ve got an empty plastic bottle in the trunk that I can fill up from the water fountain in front of the park at the trailhead?

They turned that fountain off during Covid. What if they never turned it back on?

And that fountain, where do they get that water from? I wonder if it’s high in calcium? That’s not good for constipation.

She wouldn’t have kissed me anyway. She was a virgin. So was I, but she didn’t know that.

I mean, I think she was a virgin. But she did go out with Eric Sorensen. That bastard.

It’s just as well, I would have looked like a fool.

And that guy she married, what’s up with him? He looks like an old man. I bet he doesn’t know she went out with Eric Sorensen.

I’ve been looking older lately. Less hair, more lines, a little extra around the waist.

That’s it, beginning Sunday I’m going to start working out every night, no matter what. I’m not getting old without a fight.

I wonder if I could fight off a mountain lion?

Why are there so many names for a mountain lion? Cougar, panther, puma, who comes up with all these names?

I wish I had Puma shoes in 2nd grade instead of those stupid Pony shoes.

“Hey Lund, do you like riding on ponies?”

Goddamn Eric Sorenson, he’s such an asshole. I remember seeing him down in Cabo during the hurricane. He flew in on the Massimo jet.

I heard he cashed out all his equity before the stock tanked and is now retired, living in New York.

He probably fucked Nicolle.

I read a story recently about two mountain bikers who were attacked by a puma.

Should I call it a puma? In California we call it a mountain lion. I like panther better but that seems like something they’d say in Africa.

They rode away from the puma as fast as they could, ultimately deciding to split apart.

The cat went after one of them. The guy climbed up a tree, but panthers can climb too. All they found was his bike frame and his left shoe.

I’m dead without my pepper spray.

Then I backed out of the driveway.

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When I was younger, my mother regularly called me a “worry wart.”

It was just one of a number of things she used to say to me, designed to break my spirit, crush my individuality, and make it easier to coerce me into a life of conformity.

She’s dead now and I’m not, so I think I won.

I instinctively rejected all the other aphorisms she hurled at me, but this one I particularly raged against, as it, prima facie, missed the mark. Not because I didn’t worry about things—on the contrary, I was exceptionally sure and confident about most things.

In fact, it’s this quality that I suspect drew my wife to me.

A perpetual worrier herself, the type who loses sleep, in May, over what to serve for Thanksgiving dinner, I must have looked like a pillar of certainty.

Someone who could bring stability and conviction to the frenetic and anxious questioning that perpetually filled her mind.

Of course, I’ve already buried the lede, and in now acknowledging it, worry that you may think I’ve misspelled “lead” instead of opting for the romanticized version of the term, invented by seasoned journalist in the 70s’, nostalgic for the passing of the hot metal typesetting system known as the linotype.

And having written that, I’m now worried that you think I’m just showing off instead of cleverly presenting an interesting, if somewhat esoteric, piece of trivia.

My mother was right. I am a worry wart.

I’ve always been a worry wart.

The proclamations and protestations of certitude were only there to cover a general, deep-seated anxiety and unease.

An all-encompassing sense of dread and worry.

I found this out, more accurately, faced it, seven years ago, after almost two decades of therapy.

I’m a worry wart and a slow learner.

But since then, I’ve learned how to deal with my worry.

I no longer fight or resist it, but instead, acknowledge it, almost welcome it, and in doing so, rob it of its power to influence my life.

I thought I was doing pretty well at this, letting the worry flow through my brain like a disquieted river, quavering and frenzied on the inside, but deceptively tranquil on the outside.

Yet, apparently, I was fooling no one.

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Recently, during family dinner, the four-way banter was interrupted by my son, who asked if I knew anything about doomsday.

Given his humorous nature, I found the question risible and responded with a chuckle.

“What about doomsday?” I said

He then launched into a lengthy diatribe about black holes—something he’d learned about on YouTube—and how they would eventually swallow up the universe and everything in it.

(Finally) realizing the seriousness of his question, I shifted my approach and explained that, despite all the things there are to be concerned about in life, 95% of them will never happen.

And for the 5% that do, the outcomes are rarely as dire as expected.

I explained that worrying in advance is like experiencing a loss or failure before it even happens—one that likely never materializes.

Yet your body and mind don’t know the difference, so when you worry about things that never happen, it affects you just as if they did.

“Do you understand?” I said.

“I guess,” he replied.

Sensing that I was losing the thread, I brought it down to his level.

“Let’s say you have a history test on Tuesday,” I said. “And you really don’t want to take the test. And if a black hole swallows up the Earth, you wouldn’t have to take the test, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” he replied.

“Well, I have bad news for you. You’re always going to have to take that test.”

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A couple of days later he came into my office.

“Dad,” he said. “I just wanted to thank you for what you said about the black holes. You really cooled down my brain.”

“Glad I could help buddy,” I said.

But inside I was devastated.

I thought I was so smart.

So clever.

I was sure that no matter what was going on inside my head, I’d done a good job hiding it, insulating my children from my anxiety, my neurosis, my worry.

But I hadn’t.

And I was worried.

Worried that I had saddled them with my emotional baggage.

Then, as if on cue, the universe game me yet another of its unending gifts, designed to put my head right and keep everything in perspective.

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In 2020, when my friend Jon Boorman got sick, I put a notification on his Twitter feed so that it would alert me each time he tweeted.

It was just another way to keep tabs on him, to make sure he was okay.

When the news came that Jon died, that notification became a mute point.

However, I didn’t remove it right away out of some weird sense of cyber-respect, and an even weirder sense that maybe, just maybe, I don’t know, just maybe…

Two weeks later, I looked at my account and almost cleared the notification. Yet something inside said, “Not yet. Not just yet.”

And you can imagine my shock when, two weeks and one day after Jon's passing, I received a notification saying he had just tweeted.

I clicked the link, and saw Jon’s final words, posted by his wife, who found them in his notes.

Impacted by the sentiments, I screen capped them, and saved them to my photos.

Google Photos, in all its wisdom, decided to surface them just after my conversation with my son, captioned “Four years ago today.”

Here’s what they said.

I’ve become very stoical in recent years which has made this much easier to process. I’ve had an absolutely glorious life. I sometimes feel I’ve had two or three.

I started so young in The City in London at 17, and after a few years was at the top of my game, running a trading desk in my mid-20s. What an incredible adventure.

Later married, the years we call BC (before children), traveling the world. And then the children. A beautiful girl. A sweet handsome boy. Moving to the US. What a dream.

I made some awful decisions along the way too, but had some great success. I’m comfortable, maybe too comfortable to not be hungry, but I’m always learning.

I have no regrets for myself. None. But I feel wretched for my wife, for whom retirement is now set to be a lone affair, and for the children. I’ll miss engagements, weddings, and grandchildren.

It’s a deep privilege to be able to say goodbye to people. Deep privilege. Constant family. Countless friends.

Knowing that you will die is fairly innocuous, of course we all will. But when you know you face death within weeks/months, your perspective changes. There’s elements of that we should have in our daily lives.

Glioblastoma (brain cancer) has given me that, and that’s something I didn’t expect.

I know I will die. I just know what will kill me. And roughly when.

So buy that coffee.

Have that ice cream.

And be nice.

-Jon Boorman, November 4th 2020

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I worry.

I worry too much.

I worry too much, too often, and over too many things that don’t justify my time.

And what do I have to worry about?

I’ve got a beautiful family, more money than I need, my health, friends, books, writing, a drum set, and craft beer.

I’ve got to stop worrying so much.

Before the universe gives me something to really worry about.

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The average person can read about 250 words per minute.

If you made it this far, you’ve likely spent almost nine minutes not worrying about the election—or anything else.

Come back here next week and we’ll do it again.