Why do we prevent ourselves from enjoying the moment?

There are sometimes things are going well in our lives. The kids are doing well in school, work is going well for me and my husband-things are looking great and then all of a sudden, I get this sense of dread-like “something’s gotta blow up soon, there’s been no drama for a bit…Pinch me so I realize this is all a dream.”

This is self-defeatist and pain in the neck thinking, but almost every parent I know gets caught up in it.

Why can’t we live drama-free?

Drama, problems, challenges (whatever you want to call them) provide us with something to do and perseverate on. And if we don’t have enough in our own lives, we read books and watch movies that provide this sense of drama for us.

When it comes to emotions, I think our brains do this same calculus.  We hear bad news, and our brains think there must be more coming.  There’s the superstition of bad things coming in threes, so we assume this has to be the case. Or even when things are going well, we assume our lucky streak can’t possibly last, or we look to talismans to keep our streak going.  Think of all those athletes who carry charms, or refuse to change socks, or even my son who assumes one of his hoodies gives him special powers and grants him good luck.

In reality, much of life is left up to chance.  We all take risks every day-there’s always a chance we’ll get into a car accident, fall and get hurt-any number of misfortunes, and we spend a huge amount of time trying to prevent these chance occurrences.  My mom, for instance, doesn’t like it when we travel out of the country. She swears we are taking risks, and even when we went on a cruise this spring, she warned me about not being a hero if we ran into pirates, something I thought was just crazy.  But if we spend all of our time avoiding possible dangers, we might decide never to leave the house, and never experience any of life at all.

This summer, I’m trying to enjoy more of the moments and spend time in them, rather than worrying about the future, or thinking that our lucky streak is about to end.   Bad things happen from time to time, but I know that we’ll deal with those, too. 

For example, when I warn the boys to be careful, my husband sometimes says “Stop being such a Mom.” Despite reminding him he’s the one who made me “one of those” in the first place, I’m going to try to lighten up and let them just be boys.  After all, the only thing my worries do is provide an “I told you so” moment, and I think we can all use less of those.  But that line between over-protection and prudence is hard to walk, so I’ll blame my Mommy brain, and try to lighten up.

After all, who needs the drama?  I hope not me.

by Whitney Hoffman

Photo graciously provided by Quasimondo, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved