So What Scares You?

First, credit where credit is due. Illustration from The Arabian Nights by Boris Zvorykin.


Now - quick - don't think about it. Just say it. What's the answer to that question? What scares you?

Okay, you've scratched the surface. Spiders? Dark closets? Zombies? Failure?

Ah - failure. You're heading for the motherlode.

Here's what I think: fear is what holds us back from just about everything. Fear, which serves a useful purpose as it makes us think long and hard before risky behavior, can also stop us dead in our tracks. And I believe our real, root fear is always a lot deeper than we think.

Trace whatever you're afraid of and it is probably about survival. At least I've found that to be true for me.

So we play it safe, tread the clearly marked paths to make sure we survive.

But I think it's those overgrown sideroads where there's real living to be done. It won't always be happy/carefree/joyous - but it will sometimes. And I think it is always interesting.

I like interesting. If you subscribe to the common belief, we've only got one life. And don't forget the 11th commandment: Thou shalt not bore God. I think it's equally bad to bore yourself.

If I were that princess, I think I'd hop on that dragon's back and see what happens.

Deep Thoughts at the Diner

We found ourselves having dinner at the local diner tonight, my guy and our friend the sensitive musician. We were celebrating a little; my guy's new songs are nearly ready for airplay and the local radio station loved it - it'll get airplay. Our friend's newest CD is done after five long and eventful years and he's rightfully very proud of it. I just got through another week. That's cause for celebration in my mind.

I love diners. I like the old, no frills, no space, no privacy diners the best, the ones that are mostly counter with a grill on the opposite side beside the coffee pot. It's genetic, I think. My father's entire family are diner devotees. Not only did we love to eat breakfast out, but on hot summer nights when the whole family was squeezed into the little Victorian house in the hills, we'd all pile into cars and go to the local diner for a piece of pie and a cup of coffee after dinner.

Diners, therefore, would make sense as a celebratory destination, just in case you're surprised we didn't go out for some gourmet extravaganza.

Plus you can get breakfast all day long. So while KB got a hot turkey sandwich with gravy and mashed potatoes and our friend got a turkey club, I got a Spanish omelette.

Then we started talking about the state of the world. Our friend's noticed an increased sense of desperation, of depression. In his latest visit to New York City, he said budget cuts have forced people to wait ten or fifteen minutes for trains and buses, increasing concerns about their safety. He saw garbage piling up on the sidewalks. He saw an elderly man riding the bus into Manhattan early in the morning. He was standing; no one offered him a seat. And our friend wondered - where was he going? To a doctor's appointment? To see a friend? To work?

We talked about the violence we see on the news. I was stunned to see a policeman beating a student who was protesting rising college tuition in California. Our friend said a photo essay he saw featured the same theme around the world: police holding back crowds. Whether they were protesters in California, hungry people in Haiti, looters in Chile, the theme was the same.

My guy takes what, on the face of it, seems to be a bleak view of it all. This is the way the world has always been, he argues. We don't seem to learn. We fight and we compete and we kill for our own interests. Human selfishness has destroyed civilizations and it may kill us all.

Our friend and I slowly sank into the floor.

"But don't see it as depressing," my guy continued. "Imagine that this existence is just a small part of your overall existence...and maybe you decided that for your best development you needed to learn about fear. What better place than this? What better time than now? And all you can do is change yourself, change the way you react to this ball of fear. Each of us can change, and that can change everything."

We were sitting a little straighter again when I saw something that made me smile.

The table near us had been surrounded by five teenagers. I'd watched a very thin girl ignore her plate of spaghetti, then twirl it around, then methodically cut the entire portion into five sections. She never ate any. It hadn't improved my mood.

But after they left, the bus boy went to the table to clean up. He bent over and picked up a dollar bill that had fallen beneath a chair. Without hesitation, he put the dollar with the pile of singles that had been left as a tip for the waitress.

So shines a good deed in a weary world.

Hospital-ity

Earlier in the week my son had back surgery. I was terrified.

It went alright, but he had a bad reaction to anesthesia and had to be kept overnight.

Big sigh of relief - he's doing very well.

And I came home to find HSO flat out on the couch, having spent the past five days getting progressively sicker.

Off we raced to the local hospital after the doctor at the walk-in clinic in town said, "Go."

"I do not want to." HSO was adamant.

But thankfully he went. They helped. And I was amazed at how many nurses and doctors manage to maintain their compassion and humanity despite seeing one horror story after another.

The nurses who took care of my son took his care personally. They treated him the way they'd want their own child treated. The nurses and the doctor who took care of My Guy were equally kind.

They didn't blow us off when we said his pain was unbearable...they brainstormed ways to help. They gave him all the time he needed to be sure he was comfortable enough to go home. They cared.

Going to the hospital is a combination of fear and trust. We put our faith in their expertise, hoping they'll figure out what's wrong and be able to help us mend. But we are afraid because we are helpless once we're there. We've admitted we can't do this on our own and we have to put our faith in strangers, believing they're competent, they're interested and they won't cause us unnecessary discomfort.

But letting go of control is very, very hard. And watching strangers treat the people dearest to me gnaws a whole into the center of my gut which churns for days afterwards.

It's fear. And I'm grateful that the overworked, stressed, underpaid people who I've dealt with in this past hellish week have done their very best. It was very good.