Don’t Worry Be Happy!
“Don’t Worry. Be Happy” sang Bobby McFerrin in 1988. A little before that in 1977 Bob Marley said something similar; “Baby don’t worry about a thing, cuz every little thing is gonna be all right”. Hoping that other people will be at peace is a common greeting in many different cultures and faiths across the world. In Anglican churches worshippers share peace with each other with the words “the Peace of the Lord be always with you”. This is usually accompanied either by a stiff handshake or 10 minutes of bedlam in the middle of the service, depending on what sort of church you are in!
Not even one hour?
For Christians this looks back to the words of Jesus himself when his first words to the anxious disciples after his resurrection are “peace be with you”, which says something about his priorities. Jesus has quite a lot to say about the need for us to be free from worry and anxiety, perhaps most famously towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life.” And, to bring the point home even more forcefully he adds “can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” (Matthew 6:25,27) The answer is of course quite the reverse, not worrying has a very good chance of adding to our span of life on this earth.
It’s in our heads (and others too)!
If Jesus’ teaching is so clear, why do we find following it so difficult? The answer is in our own heads (and the heads of others around us). The brain is an extraordinarily complex part of our bodies and I am not a neuroscientist but people have developed simple models to help us understand what is going on. For many years, drawing on the work of Paul MacLean, people saw the brain as operating across three layers – the survival brain, the emotional brain and the thinking brain. In this model, which is seen as somewhat outdated now, our anxiety comes as an instant reaction from the ‘lower’ parts of the brain to the conditions we find ourselves in. Others, especially Steve Peters, have developed this model to describe parts of the brain as ‘the human, the chimp, and the computer’. Other neuroscientists such as Lisa Feldman Barrett argue that the brain is not divided up in this way but constructs predictions using past experiences to give responses to the world around us. Whichever model we choose, they all point to the fact that many of our responses are automatic, so that in the moment they happen they can feel out of our control. But what Barrett and Peters’ models show us is that these automatic responses are not fixed. We can expand our experiences to give a broader field of predictions, which can lead to different reactions. Or as Peters would say, we can reprogramme the computer.
Not a quick fix
Jesus’ teaching is hard to follow because not worrying is something we need to learn, it’s not an instant fix. What can make it even more challenging is that we did not form our thinking patterns on our own, we did it through our experiences with others, especially in our families when we were children (whatever shape that family may have taken). It was in our families that we learnt how relationships work and how to react when we are under stress. It’s in our families that we first experienced the anxiety of those close to us and formed what later might seem like automatic reactions to it. It’s those automatic reactions that we carry into our adult lives and the other ‘families’ that we are a part of including, if we are part of a congregation, our churches. And as if that wasn’t enough, everyone else there is doing the same thing at the same time!
If this article has resonated with you, and you would like to explore how this way of thinking might help you develop your leadership, enhance your wellbeing, or reflect more deeply on your ministry, I would be delighted to have an initial conversation with you.
You can book a no-obligation 30-minute conversation using the button below.
Due to divorce my parents were living in separate countries. When my father became ill I would “worry” if I could make it back to see him before he died. He had several bouts of severe illness and each time I repeated my worry pattern. My love for him was very strong.
In the end all choices and chances were not mine to make as I was not informed of his death until after he had been buried with military honors.
His second wife informed me of the beautiful service and said how lovely it was with everyone there. Not quite I replied, his four adult children to his first wife were not even aware of it, let alone allowed to attend it!
How come? In the end it was my
Dad’s choice for us to be notified after the funeral as he was so worried about the fragile mental health of his wife.
Heartbreaking stuff!
Hi Karen. Thank you for sharing such an honest comment. There is often so much going on in one another’s lives than we realise. I will be writing more over the next few weeks and would be grateful to hear your reactions to it.
Here’s me trying to make that a poem:
“Don’t worry, be happy,” sang Bobby McFerrin.
“Every little thing will be all right,” sang Marley.
Jesus, fresh from the tomb,
stood among frightened friends and said,
“Peace be with you.”
The disciples receive these words while hiding behind locked doors.
Which feels realistic.
Most anxiety lives behind locked doors.
Some are wooden doors.
Some are emotional doors.
Some are church doors.
Peace be with you.
Again Jesus says it.
As though he knows we rarely hear it the first time.
Or the second.
Or the twentieth.
Do not worry about your life. A beautiful instruction,
rather like saying, “Please teach a goldfish not to be wet.”
We worry before breakfast.
We worry during breakfast.
We worry that breakfast will give us something to worry about.
Jesus asks, Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
Worry promises much. It delivers little.
It is a dreadful architect, it builds no houses, it creates no gardens, it writes no songs.
Yet it keeps taking up residence.
Our brains are tiny galaxies of memory.
Libraries filled with stories that do not always agree with one another.
The brain is always preparing for tomorrow.
Sometimes helpfully.
Sometimes not.
One experience becomes a pattern.
A pattern becomes an expectation.
An expectation becomes a reflex.
Soon we are reacting before we know
we have reacted.
Like a playwright specialising exclusively in unhappy endings,
our inner chimp begins shouting,
our inner computer runs old programmes,
ancient code written by long-forgotten fears learned
at family tables, through love, stress, silence and care.
But brains can change, old code can renew.
Peace is not a switch; it is a school.
And with Christ, and with each other, we learn.
Peace be with you.
The greeting becomes a lesson, the lesson becomes a habit,
the habit becomes a culture, the culture becomes a witness.
A household shaped by peace looks different.
People listen longer.
People defend themselves less.
People laugh more easily.
People stop treating disagreement as a fire alarm.
The scattered children of God begin to discover that they belong.
A church starts to resemble Bethany, a place where friends gather,
where questions are welcome.
where doubts can sit down.
Where love smells stronger than fear.
Like Mary’s perfume filling the house.
Like worship escaping from the sanctuary
and settling in the sofa cushions.