Reason(able) Fear

I once recall feeling dread and tears for one and a half months. I was twelve at the time and had read an Indian folklore in which a young woman gets pregnant just by drinking water from the same river as a man. After missing a skip in my early young-hood, and recalling how I drank water from the same water-cooler right after a boy did, I was convinced that I was pregnant. It was real fear. However, it went away as I learned much later how there are certain fears that never come true. Good or bad, that's my story of fear to maintain some perspective today.

Fear can be debilitating. Fear can be reasonable and unreasonable. Fear can also save lives and appreciate life. One thing I realized recently is how fear is rooted in mostly interpersonal loss. The fear of losing people. It is the main great phase of difficulty, not physical death. If you think about it, the fear of losing people is easy to solve if you have close ones and death won’t feel as deadly. I know it from experience, from the other side of the planet. During these precarious but well-connected times, there are marriages that are getting saved which were probably at the brink of divorce two weeks ago, children are getting to know their parents’ favorite sport as a kid, and books are being churned out quickly by some authors who needed just a tad bit more time. It’s not all bad news, hopefully, and life will return just as we knew it, and with greater understanding.