Fears and Phobias

Grim Reaper

The ultimate fear we all share is our death. The grim reaper is all around but kept under ground like a taboo that rarely is mentioned. I enjoy my permanent holiday from my working life and have no wish for it to end. Would we wish to have planned date, like a retirement age when it is time to go? A simple answer is to say it is Gods will when the time will come. Why have a huge debate and use all the skills of medical intervention to prolong life?

I have an ambition to live to be 150 inspired by the long life line up the middle of my hand. It is great to be able to cycle to the swimming pool and play with the grandchildren. To go on trips with my wife and enjoy her cooking. But change is inevitable, either through ill health or accident. What will be, will be. 

There is the lurking fear that there will be the loss of freedom. The inability to do what I want to do, being in unending pain. Loosing my grip on events and the companionship of my wife. There are plenty of nonsense sayings to dispel worry, but my favourite is:

Something nearly always happens

When you least expect it.

Having read a book by a retired community nurse I was reminded that people usually wish to fall asleep in their own bed, peacefully and without pain. However the reality is that they are rushed to hospital in unfamiliar surroundings and die alone with no sweet dreams.

That is my fear.

PS

Contagion

Is fear contagious? Yes I think so.

is fear transmitted genetically? In my case probably yes.

A common but irrational fear possessed my mother. She wanted to fly but she had developed a profound and unremitting distrust of all aircraft. It was the time when mass travel burst into the popular consciousness. 2 week package holidays on the continent for the "ordinary working people". The travel bug bit my mother hard. Ideally she would have loved to travel on cruise ships as if we were rich people enjoying the heyday of the trans-Atlantic luxury liners. But then she always did have an over-active imagination. So we had to endure the noisy propellor driven smelly aeroplanes. Consequently she became a nervous wreck for days. prior to any flight. The cruise obsession culminated in a mini Mediterranean cruise on a Greek ship smelling persistently of kerosene and full of randy Greek sailors, one of whom attempted to abdduct my mother.

Thereafter our continental adventures were restricted to annual trips to Malta to stay in the flat of a family friend. But still there was the 4 hour flight to contend with punctuate with the additionally harrowing command to fasten the seat belts in response to turbulence over the Alps.

I was caught up in the contagion of aircraft fear until one day i flew alone to India on what could not be described as a direct route. The plane stopped in Geneva and Cairo, so this meant a total of 3 landings and 3 take-offs. I was convinced that the plane was only kept aloft by my constant wakeful vigilance and will. However, after Cairo I fell asleep completely exhausted. I awoke to find myself still airborne and alive. After that the fear vanished.

JJ