Hakuna Matata

My Monday was excellent. Not because it was particularly eventful, but because it wasn't.  I woke up to beautiful blue skies, warm sunshine and no humidity (generally a precursor for excellent). I finished Alyssa's post with my morning coffee (and Matt Lauer), showered, dressed and went off to work without a hitch. It's still too quiet over there, nice to be productive, but I miss my friends and the commotion. A midafternoon conversation about a possibly delayed project leaves me thinking about today's post. "Don’t worry; I'm sure we'll have it next week,” I am told. My response, "Not worrying, no point," and I meant it. I am subjected to a few blog-related jabs at my "Zen" like calm, but I actually I gave up unnecessary worrying pre-blog.

Cue the music:
Hakuna Matata! What a wonderful phrase
Hakuna Matata! Ain't no passing craze
It means no worries, for the rest of your days
It's our problem-free philosophy, Hakuna Matata!

It’s 1994 and Disney's The Lion King is our family favorite. The cheery theme song, "Hakuna Matata" is played over and over in the car and its' happy mantra quickly became a family catchphrase. (Hakuna Matata is a Swahili phrase that is literally translated as "There are no worries.") It was our comeback to everything those days. A tag line for the daily issues, problems solved. Secretly, it never seemed to do the trick for me; I wasted too much time worrying,(little did I know that the real worry years had yet to arrive on my doorstep). Funny looking back from this vantage point; I was 32, David and Scott were 4 and 5, and I was pregnant with Andrew. We lived in our first house, a 3-bedroom split that I never liked (but we made it work), we had great neighbors, 4 healthy parents within a mile, I was $elling houses(real estate was my thing back them), and Jeffrey was nearing Partnership. Life was pretty good, what was I stressing about?

Flash forward: Last night, close to 11, Jeffrey and I take the dog out on a surprisingly chilly August night (feels good for a change). We sat on the front steps and I shared with him the words that had started to fill the lines of my virtual yellow legal pad. He remembered the "Hakuna Matata" days (even reminded me exactly where we first saw The Lion King - amazing considering I'm not sure he could recall what we did last week) and we enjoyed a bittersweet laugh about the silly fights and daily woes of our early 30's. Money (pre-school tuition looks pretty good right now), getting the kids to sleep, whose parents saw the kids more, which one we would see for Sunday dinner, and more than a few discussions about the lack of "Jill and Jeffrey" time. Too bad the wisdom of the future didn't clue me in until years later to let go of the little struggles, worrying doesn't fix anything and only leaves wrinkles in its wake.

I'm not suggesting that we should skip through our days in some Pollyanna haze, I'm just saying that if an unavoidable speed bump gets in our way, and there's no other way around it, we just have to slow down and get over it. Thinking about it, evaluating all the related issues, all the "what-if" scenarios; guess what, still only one way to go. Worry or not, most situations result in an outcome somewhere between best-case and doomsday scenarios. If our eyes are open, we can adjust our actions accordingly, it's the other parts of the plan that we can't control. I think I was just procrastinating back then, a few simple changes (cutting up the credit cards would have been a good one) and we wouldn't have had much to worry about. Even the life and death problems, those are the ones we really can't control, and the ones where time is most wasted.  My father used to say, "If there's no solution, there's no problem." I wish he took some of his own advice; unfortunately I think he kept all his worrying trapped in his heart. Lesson learned.

Here we are, 17 years after the Disney days, and a familiar phrase keeps showing up in my conversations with the under-30 set (although maybe I should be a trendsetter and reintroduce Timon & Pumba's lyrics). It's a fresh version (apparently the ad-hoc motto of Australia), simply "No Worries." According to Wikipedia (talk like a young person, research like a young person), “No Worries” is an Australian English expression, meaning "do not worry about that", "that's alright", or "sure thing". It is similar to the American English, “no problem." I think maybe those Aussies got it right; we are so focused on eradicating the "problem" when we really just need to do away with the "worry".

Whichever expression works for you, it's the message that we should take seriously. Life is moving forward, despite our best efforts for a few seconds to think it through (a "pause" button would be nice though). Try it just once today; here's the scenario, someone will tell you something you didn't want to hear and wait for your response, reply simply with "No Worries".

I know; you feel better already.