Gratitude lists are everywhere. Apps encourage you to make them, yoga teachers urge you to think of only what serves you, and there’s a whole line of greeting cards centered around being thankful. 

But I’m thinking that a worry list might be even more rewarding. Let’s be honest – at 4 am when your eyes pop open the first thing that comes to mind is not counting your blessings. No, it’s to wallow in the doom scrolling of your own life.

Usually it starts with the mundane of “oh I really don’t want to have to talk to x tomorrow,” followed by “could that dark spot on my leg be melanoma” to fretting over family or friends facing health issues, real or imagined (on their part and yours), and culminating with “how high will the seas rise” or “has Ebola broken out yet in Florida (not to mention the invasion of the screwworm fly).” At that point, you usually cycle back to something like “did I forget to pick up milk for coffee this morning” or “did my husband/wife/partner put out the trash for trash day” and eventually the boredom of your own thoughts lulls you back to sleep.

I’m thinking that if we could harness the collective power of our worry lists their combined force might just be enough to generate some new form of power that could turn that dark but intense electricity into something positive and not negative.

The little I remember about electricity from my Introduction to Physical Science class in 9th grade (which I’m sure is no longer taught) is that to get a positive you have to have a negative as well.

Like I said, a worry list isn’t so bad after all.