Many years ago I founded an after-school music empowerment program at my old high school called the Tribe Music Mentorship Project. Its purpose was to bring my years of professional music and theatre experience and create a rock band in which everyone belonged, regardless of talent or age. It was extremely meaningful for me and in hindsight I can now see that the Tribe was my first true ministry.
Though most of our music was original, one of the cover songs we performed was an upbeat arrangement of Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” We sang it with joy, with harmonies, with smiles that were impossible to fake. At the time it felt like a catchy anthem — simple, optimistic and genuinely fun. We took the message to heart.
I’ve thought about that song many times since.
For the older I get, the more I embrace the fact that we sang it not as a message to ignore reality, but as an anthem demonstrating that reality is difficult enough without rehearsing it over and over in our minds.
Worry has a peculiar way of convincing us that we’re doing something useful. It feels like action. It feels responsible. It feels as though we’re demonstrating our love and our vigilance. If we worry enough about our children, our health, our finances or the people we love, perhaps we’ve somehow earned the right to believe we’ve done everything we can.
But worry is often motion without movement. We spin our wheels while convincing ourselves we’re making progress.
Jesus asked a remarkably practical question: “Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”
Notice what he didn’t ask. He didn’t ask whether our concerns are legitimate. They often are. He didn’t accuse people of lacking faith. He simply invited them to notice whether worry actually accomplishes what it promises.
The Buddha offered a similar invitation in a different language. The Stoics encouraged us to distinguish between what is within our control and what is not. Taoism teaches that water reaches its destination not by force but by flowing. Across centuries and continents, the world’s wisdom traditions keep arriving at the same surprising conclusion: a calmer mind usually sees more clearly than a frightened one.
This isn’t because bad things never happen. They do. Nor is it because people of faith are somehow exempt from fear or grief.
And I have never been persuaded by the suggestion that worrying proves someone doesn’t trust God. By that logic, grieving the loss of someone we love is also be a failure of faith. It is not. Grief is love with nowhere to go. Worry, also, is often born from love.
The question isn’t whether we care. The question is whether worry is the healthiest expression of that care.
Modern psychology and neuroscience offer an interesting companion to this ancient wisdom. When we become consumed by worry, our attention narrows. Our minds rehearse worst-case scenarios. Creativity, flexibility, humor and curiosity quietly step out of the room. Our bodies remain on alert, preparing for dangers that may never arrive.
But if we can soothe our worry, even just a little, something very encouraging begins to happen. Our breathing slows. Our thoughts soften. Our imagination, once trapped by rehearsing catastrophes, begins to notice possibility again. We may not suddenly believe everything will be fine. But we do begin to suspect that just maybe it could be.
Sometimes that tiny shift is enough. Enough for a new idea to emerge. Enough to hear advice we couldn’t hear before. Enough to notice an opportunity we had overlooked. Enough to become the version of ourselves best equipped to meet whatever comes.
Some spiritual traditions go even further, suggesting that it is our expectations that participate in shaping reality itself. Whether or not science will ultimately support that thought remains an open question. What science does confirm, however, is that our expectations profoundly shape how we perceive, interpret, and respond to the world. And our responses often influence the outcomes that follow.
Maybe that is miracle enough.
The spiritual practice of acceptance, or nonresistance, is sometimes misunderstood as giving up. Or worse, accepting things we simply must not accept, such as injustice. It isn’t. Acceptance is about simply stopping our inner arguing with the present long enough to discover what the present is asking of us next.
That’s why the ancient teachers returned to this lesson again and again. Not because they wanted us to care less. Because they wanted us to suffer less. Because they knew that wisdom rarely enters through a clenched mind.
If we can quiet our worry — even for a single moment — it sends a gentle ripple throughout our whole being. The body eases its vigilance. The mind becomes more spacious. Hope gently whispers that perhaps the story is not finished yet.
And in that smallest of openings, we become available to the future once again. Not because we know everything will be all right. But because we remember that whatever comes next will be met most faithfully, most wisely, and most lovingly by the calmest version of ourselves.
Wil Darcangelo, M.Div, is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister of the First Church in Lancaster at the Bulfinch Meetinghouse in Massachusetts, progressive theologian, and essayist on optimistic spirituality in the Information Age. Follow him on Substack, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
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