The Worrywart’s Garden

I saw a post the other day from Ella Emhoff, the daughter of former Vice President Kamala Harris. She was laying her anxieties out like laundry on the line—worries about global warming, her angst over the state of the world, worries about things so big that none of us, not even her famous mother, could fix with a snap of the fingers.

“I experience a lot of climate anxiety, like a lot of us do,” she said on TikTok.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not making light of her feelings. Anxiety’s real enough—it’s like a stubborn dandelion in your front yard.

You can mow it down, pull at it, scold it, and even spray it with fancy chemicals, but it pops back up when you least expect it. What I want to tell Ella, if she’d listen, is that her problem isn’t the dandelion itself.

It’s thinking she can turn the whole world into a golf-course-green lawn.

Global warming isn’t keeping her awake at night. Not really.

What’s keeping her up is the idea that it’s her job to fret about it nonstop, as if her tossing and turning will lower the temperature a single degree. That’s the trick anxiety plays—it makes us think the size of our worry should match the size of the problem.

But that’s like bringing a teacup to catch Niagara Falls. You’ll only end up wet and miserable.

My grandma used to say, “Worrying is like carrying an umbrella indoors. It don’t stop the rain, but it sure makes it hard to move around the house.”

That woman had a way of boiling complicated things down to cornbread and beans. If you’ve control over a situation, then do something about it. If you don’t, well, fretting won’t make the clouds part any faster.

I wish I could sit with that young lady over a plate of pancakes and tell her about the time I nearly gave myself an ulcer worrying about Y2K.

Remember that? They said the whole world would shut down at midnight.

Banks would collapse, planes would fall from the sky, refrigerators would quit, cold turkey. I filled the pantry with enough canned beans to feed a small army.

Well, January 1st rolled around, and guess what? My toaster still worked, and I had beans until Easter of last year. That’s what worry bought me: heartburn and a wife who still teases me about the “Beanpocalypse.”

The truth is, life gives you two baskets. One’s labeled “Things I Can Do Something About.” The other says “Things That Ain’t Mine to Fix.”

Most of our anxieties come from mixing up the baskets. You’ll notice the sun still comes up, grass still grows, and the dog still needs walking, whether you pace the floor or not.

Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t care about the world. Of course, we should recycle, vote, and do our part to be good neighbors on this planet.

But there’s a difference between doing your duty and putting the whole globe on your shoulders like Atlas. That’s not noble—that’s exhausting, and exhaustion doesn’t change anything except your mood.

What I want her—and anyone else knotted up with anxiety—to know is this: peace comes from learning the fine art of letting go. It’s okay to set the heavy things down.

It’s okay to admit you’re not the grand puppet master of history. Most of us are just trying to keep the car gassed up, the bills paid, and the cat from scratching the couch.

And you know what? That’s enough.

So if I could tell Kamala’s daughter anything, it would be this: Plant yourself a garden, real or imagined. Weed it when you can, water it when you’re able, and then sit back in the evening and admire the marigolds.

The world’s problems may still loom like thunderclouds, but at least your little patch of earth will be in order. And here’s the kicker—sometimes tending to that little garden does more good than all the worrying in the world, because a peaceful person spreads peace, and that’s the only climate change we can truly count on.