Every day, we are bombarded by more information than we know what to do with. It feels charmingly quaint to read Ellen White’s writings describing hers as a “fast” age. If only she knew how much crazier it would get. She wrote at length about distractions and wasted mental energy in a time when those distractions were. . . crocheting and reading novels.
The reasoning behind that last one is very interesting because of how it extends into our day. The arguments against novel-reading had to do with time, but also investing so much energy into caring about a fictitious world that dealing with the real world becomes less of a priority. Go ahead and fight me on this, but I would argue that we now have more information about the real world than is practical or useful. I’m not advocating willful ignorance, but taking a moment to consider the difference between the things we worry about and the things we can actually do something about. The circle of things we can do something about is called the “circle of influence.” It’s a different size for all of us, but for most of us it’s significantly smaller than our “circle of concern,” or the things we tend to worry and care about. The bigger the difference between those two, the more you set yourself up for anxiety and depression. Consider the news. Whether you get it from TV, internet, or the lovely old-fashioned physical newspaper, there is definitely more in there than you can act on. Helpful: the current rules and guidelines about physical distancing and emerging information from credible sources about how to combat the virus. Not helpful, but occasionally amusing: politicians and/or regular citizens acting ridiculous in relationship to these things. Definitely not helpful or amusing: doomscrolling, or the practice of scanning the news to find out what horrible thing is happening next out of a sense of fear and dread. We do not control what other people do. To save yourself a world of pain and anxiety, waste as little emotional energy as possible on the actions of other people you cannot influence. Even before the pandemic made this such a big issue--it’s easy to feel rage at people breaking restrictions and spreading the disease among people who were actually following the rules--I have seen so many people broken up by worrying about things they can’t actually do anything about. Here are some examples of things that I cannot control and am occasionally tempted to worry about: what other people think of my gender in relationship to my job, whether I will catch COVID from someone at the store, whether the American government will collapse over the next few months, whether people I love will die for one reason or another, whether Disneyland will close forever after all this pandemic time off, whether the economy of Anaheim will implode as a result, whether the global economy will implode, whether I’ll end up pastoring a district after pastors are laid off, which pastors will get laid off if giving continues to decline, whether my next platelet donation will give me a painful reaction or be a truly pleasant experience, whether I’ll catch COVID from donating, whether my husband will collapse from whatever mysterious thing ails him, whether people I care about will go broke, whether the next thing I eat will give me acid reflux and knock out my voice for another few weeks, whether I’m doing a good enough job pastoring (whatever that means), whether global warming will fry everyone in my lifetime, whether my health will suffer from secondhand pot smoke (someone who lives near me indulges regularly within smell-distance of my window), and whether the kids who play unsupervised in my neighborhood will get run over by a car one of these days. I realize that was a long list, and quite personal, but I wanted to really drive home the sheer volume of issues flooding my brain, the majority of which I can do little to nothing about. Your own list may look very different, but in reality is it that different? Are you concerned with issues in the news, in the world, and in your home that you can't actually do anything about yourself? Obviously, there are things I can do to affect the outcome of some of these things (in the case of the reflux, for example, I can avoid the worst offenders like delicious, greasy Mexican food). For most of them, though, I am at the mercy of other people with a good deal more or different influence than I possess. So what’s the use of spending the emotional energy to worry about them? Here’s the interesting thing about cares and worries: when we say “no” to worrying about things we can’t control, it frees up more emotional energy to attend to the things we can actually do something about. I cannot do anything--truly, anything--about the Anaheim economy or, in fact, the global economy. By not worrying about those things, I can focus on, you know, making sure my youth group is cared for, preparing halfway decent sermons, taking time to listen to the people in my actual circle of influence in a compassionate way, showing affection to my husband, and, yes, preparing myself decent food that won’t trigger reflux and murder my voice. To do triage on whether something is worth caring about, consider the following decision tree: Is it in my circle of influence? If no, either pray about it or ignore it. If yes, do I have enough energy and/or resources to do something about it? If no, pray about it, ignore it, or schedule a time further down the road to do something about it. If yes, pray about it, do something about it, then move on with your day. If prayer figures heavily into this, it’s because it does a wonderful job of taking all these different worries and giving them someplace productive to go. Prayer is the crucible that turns useless worry dross into silver action. If you find yourself anxious about anything, you may actually need prayer to sort out whether it really is in your circle of influence. Even as my circle of influence has expanded in recent years, I’ve been impressed by how much less I control than I once thought I did. By focusing on what I can do, and do well, I’ve become a happier, healthier, more stable person. Meanwhile, life goes on, and it does so when we do our best about the things we have actually been given the ability and responsibility to do, rather than drowning in an ocean of cares we cannot possibly change.
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AuthorJillian Lutes is the youth pastor at West Covina Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church. Archives
May 2020
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