August 18th, 2015 → 5:57 am @ // No Comments

    “That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes,
    To worry lambs and lap their gentle blood.” – Richard III

I read an article recently about anxiety in the 21st century and, astoundingly, it said that Shakespeare only used the word “worry” once in his entire collection of works (see quote above, and he used it to mean “choke,” not be stressful).  Through my own research I discovered that Shakespeare actually uses worry twice, if you allow both “worry” and “worrying,” but still, that isn’t much use of the word, and not even in the way we use it today.  The article suggested that people simply didn’t worry back in the 16th century; that doing so is a modern malady, invented really in the 20th century when we finally had the time to navel-gaze and let anxiety about things grow.  Personally, I can not imagine my life without worrying.  What would I do for 75% of every day?  How many novel mathematical theorems would I be able to come up with if 98% of my brain weren’t allocated to worrying?  What kind of conversations would I have with my son if half of them weren’t motivated by worry of him harming himself?  Would I enjoy eating more if I didn’t always worry about becoming fat?  I…can’t…imagine…


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