Fear Plays a Part (For Me, Anyway)

I was getting ready for my seven-year-old's birthday party today (most years we host it at a local hotel with a waterslide, pool, and party room), and wondering why I was dreading the whole thing.  I get stressed out when it comes to big events like this.  My husband finds it fun, but I would rather stay home.  So I did some self-examination, trying to figure out why.

I concluded that part of my anxiety stems from fear for the kids' safety.  There are always risks while swimming, and I don't want someone else's kid (let alone one of mine) to get hurt while I'm responsible for them.  That being said, there will be several adults from our family there, plus a paid lifeguard from the hotel, so they'll be well-supervised.  Having someone drown would be almost unheard of; it's just that my imagination runs away with me until I fear the worst.

The other part of my dread is that something will go wrong with the party itself - I won't have enough plates or napkins, we won't have enough food, someone will be unhappy with something I've prepared, etc.  None of that would be catastrophic, of course, but I've had the ideal of the "perfect" hostess ingrained in me since I was young, and I fear falling short of that.

How does this relate to laziness?  Well, I know that sometimes I can let my fears paralyze me.  I worry so much about things going wrong/not being perfect that it makes me want to avoid the whole thing.  This kind of avoidance can easily turn into a lazy mentality.  Rather than make the effort, someone might just do something smaller or do nothing at all instead of taking the risk.  As you probably can imagine, laziness (or inactivity due to fear paralysis) can then become a pattern.  Objects at rest tend to stay at rest, you know (not sure which of Newton's laws that one is).

I hope this introspection has helped me relax about hosting the pool party tonight.  It's really not that big a deal - everyone there will be either a friend or family member, so they're not really going to care if things are perfect or not.  It's both unrealistic and unnecessary to demand that things be perfect.