Worry Beads

“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” (1960-1962) I witnessed an amazing phenomena on the Island of Crete.  I saw grown Greek men playing with beads as they sat sipping their coffee in tavernas along the streets in towns and villages all across the island. Never had I seen anything like it before.  Some of the men played with great flourish, flipping the beads and making them click against one another.  At first, I thought these beads were some kind of rosary or prayer rope, but then I learned that they had no religious purpose at all.  They were called worry beads and back then, used only by men.  The komboloi is a string of amber beads manipulated with one or two hands and used to pass the time, or just to keep your hands busy—it is a matter of worrying beads.  

In 1998, on the island of Nafplion, the Evangelinos’ family established the first and only Komboloi Museum in the world with the goal of spreading the knowledge and history of the traditional Greek komboloi.

My worry beads are now over fifty-five years old (and if they could speak, they could tell you a story of a lot of worries that have come and gone).  The amber beads have colored with age and the string is a bit frayed, but still, on occasion, I’ll take them out of my desk drawer and practice my “worrying” skills.  

Komboloi can be purchased online if you’d like to give the beads a whirl, a click, or a flip.  It is a good way of letting go of stress and worries.  I think I’m going to pull my old worry beads out of the desk drawer this morning and practice a bit.  Maybe it will help me deal with my frustrations with politics, religion, and all the other “stressors” I deal with every day.