THE FEAR

Just FYI for anyone following: the follow-up mammogram was all clear, she was told by the radiologist that older tattoo ink can sometimes show up as a spot in a lymph node, that is what they were seeing...

No more specific news about Phoebe's dad, it is apparently a "wait and see" sort of situation... she has talked to him a couple times and he is improving, and is apparently ravenously hungry. These are very good things.

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Hunter S. Thompson often wrote about "the fear". Like "THE" fear. Some of it, in his case clearly, was drug-induced; but this is something we all have. Not a specific fear... like "oh man, am I afraid of skydiving and turtles and circus peanuts", but an overall fear. A non-specific panic over the state and pace of life itself. THE fear. The fear is personified in all sorts of evil characters, from children's stories to religious texts. Tolkien of course makes it into an object. A ring. THE ring... and it is no mistake that this one ring is the center of his story. Negativity and dread, evil, darkness, jealousy .. hate even... these things are born of the fear. 

We all have it. People scoff when they hear a serial murderer or rapist or other variously horrible person say "I'm not that different than anyone else"... people scoff like they don't have the fear. They have it. We all have it, and sometimes we lose the fight to it. We all have days when the fear wins. We have events in our lives that force us to wrestle the fear at a statistical disadvantage. The fear changes shape and size of its own accord, but sometimes we feed it with our own hands and sometimes we inadvertently hand it an axe to swing. 

We can fool ourselves into pretending the fear isn't there with a wide variety of social constructs; some of these are positive, most of them are used for nefarious purposes by a handful of black-hearts willing to throw innocent people under the bus for money and power. You can choose to ignore this, lament it, or accept it and move on.

The point is, this fight is each of ours to face alone. We can gather tools and firewood, build a fort out of whatever beliefs we have, fashion whatever weapons out of logic and reason we think might work, talk about ninja moves with friends and family... but when the fear comes it's one-on-one. Just you and it. You win or you lose, and every day you live the results are posted for everyone to see. 

Fight on, people. Accept the challenge, face it, knock it down. Kick its ass before breakfast and put your feet on its back while you enjoy your coffee. This is how good days start. 

Have a good day!

Ryan