Dwelling is actually an old English word translated as a place of residence. A place where someone leaves. And your dwelling is usually your comfort zone. A fortress of some sort and a cleft of strength. Most living creatures, no matter how migratory, customarily retreat to their “dwelling” to refuel and prepare for another productive time ahead. For every living creature, none wants to mess with such a place as their dwelling.
Apart from perpetually working to keep the place fit for your own health and comfort, you also will mind who and what will dwell with you or who and what you dwell with. Do you want to reside or dwell among your doubts, fears and insecurities? What will happen if you do?
What would happen if you chose instead to live among your goals and aspirations, thinking about how you could achieve them, and planning what you are going to do to help you work towards them?
When everyone gets to this juncture, there is an intense struggle between fearing and worrying about the encumbrances that confront us and actually thinking about them with a view to arriving at a possible panacea.
To leap this gulf, you must deliberately find the differentia between worrying and thinking. From therein you shall discover where to find your strength.
Fear is congenital. Everyone is born with the instinct. That’s what makes us run fast across the road at the sight of an oncoming vehicle. That’s what makes us run from wild beasts at their sight. Without the fear impulse, we will all perish for lack of it. We all need varying doses of fear to function in our world. But worry is a close relative of fear.
All the things that make us fearful are the same as those that make us worry. We worry all the time, about almost everything. We worry about upsetting others by telling the truth, so we tell ‘white lies’ instead.
We worry about getting something wrong, so we don’t even try to do it. We worry about looking stupid, so we keep our heads down and leave it to others to have a go first.
We naturally worry about the people we love and what might happen to them, or about what might happen to us. We worry about money, security, our jobs, our friendships, our health, our age, our appearance, our popularity, our image. With all this worry, how do we ever find the time to actually do anything about any of it?
What I believe many of us do, is worry too much. Dwelling wholly on our fears that threaten our peace. Worry is wholly negative. If we worry about something, we build it up into a massive problem; we literally paralyze our ability to think and behave rationally. People often quickly say, ‘I think too much.’ some actually say it as a badge of honor but what they are actually doing is worrying about the things they need to think about.
I don’t think it is possible to think too much. No, it is not. Thinking is positive energy. Thinking is good. Thinking produces ideas and plans and motivation; thinking makes things happen.
If we can’t think clearly and we can’t make decisions then we can’t do anything to deal with the source of our concerns. This is at the heart of our challenge to get out of our own way and build the life we want.
Thinking minds are creative minds. They are co-creators with God; while worrying minds are flattened and full of the debilitating rays of anxiety that suffocate creativity. Be anxious for nothing, the Bible says; but that’s only if you know whither thou dwelleth. In thinking or in fear?
Happy Sunday!
Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo.
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