Fear is such a curse. It really is. Even though it’s not the most pleasant thing in the world to do, it’s good to take some time out to go ahead and think about the things that scare or frighten you. Right? It is a good thing, right?

Like, these wonderful, damned bugs that sting. I go right into red alert if I hear the dreaded buzzing, and if I see a bee, I scream like I just broke a bone and head for the hills. The most frightening part of me and bees is that this extreme reaction is way out of my control. The fear comes the instant I see one, it takes over, and there’s no way to stop it. There’s no time to suck in my breath, hold it, and wait for thinking to kick in to get that fear under control. The zoom on my camera allowed me to maintain a good distance so I could take this photo. When the bee flew, so did I!

I fear that lack of control the most. The years haven’t tamed that out-of-control fear either, and of course that adds to the heap to handle.

A few years ago, I drove an hour to work down in Little Rock. Half the trip was through back roads that had little traffic, the other half was in rush hour traffic on the freeway. I put a lot of rough miles on my truck in a short time during that year, and it became quite the worry that the truck would give out and strand me either in a very dangerous spot amid all the traffic, or in the middle of nowhere.

One day, I was just about at the halfway mark when I started hearing something strange going on in the rear end of the truck. Or, I thought I did. My mind raced through the possibilities – a u-joint, the transaxle, brakes, a tire about to blow, the transmission – and the fear washed over me like a tsunami. My vision around the edges started to go dark and I became so light-headed that I had to pull over and stop. When I started to drive again, the sounds were gone, but the tsunami was far from over.

The fear then became the terrifying fear of losing control, of losing my mind, of losing the ability to choose whether I was losing my mind or not. I was helpless, disoriented, terrified and more alone than I had ever felt.

Since then, the terror has, more or less, generalized, packaging itself in smaller, easier to handle chunks. Once in awhile, something will set me back in my tracks and threaten to upset my apple cart again, despite all my attempts to remain adamantly positive, spiritual and content. So when the chunks rain down on me, I’m back to worrying about losing it again.

That’s where I’ve been for the last few weeks. Last weekend, I was so exhausted from fighting it that I slept for 20 hours straight. This week, I went through the motions, but the lights were on and nobody was home. I walked through the week in a dull haze.

Snakes. A yelp and a jump, then curiosity takes over and I check the slithery, slimy thing out. When the pennies don’t quite stretch far enough and I’m faced with the ol’ tap dance (I can’t dance!), I make a plan and put it aside once the decisions are made. When this truck makes a funny noise, I check my cell phone’s number of bars. If I’ve got at least 3, I relax. It only takes 10 minutes to drive to work now.

Now that it’s all put into words and concrete, so to speak, I’m hoping I can wake up tomorrow in a new frame of mind.

What do ya think? Am I nuts?

Maybe I spend too much time alone…

Can you imagine photographing an F16 fighter breaking the sound barrier? That there is a visible reaction at all is what astounds me. In essence, we are seeing sound! The moisture caught in the sound waves makes it visible.

It’s like fire. You know it exists, but where is it? You know it takes a chemical reaction of sorts to produce fire, but where does it come from? And when you blow the match out, where does the fire go? Is it gone? It is invisible until it is called.

Yeah, I sit around and think of this stuff. Like the age old “if a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound if no one is there to hear it?” conundrum. I could never figure out why someone even asked that question. Of course it makes a sound, a rather big one, because it’s the nature of one physical thing smacking into another, right? Besides, I bet my dog heard that tree fall, even if I didn’t.

Instead of worrying about a danged tree, why not ask questions about thinking and feeling and consciousness?  And, levels of existence? Instead of ignoring the inexplicable because it can’t be seen or measured, why not take the leap and spread out into the metaphysical?

Sure, we fear the unknown. But, ignoring it won’t make it go away. Quantum physics is taking just that leap. By exploring matter at the quantum level, they are about to prove that God exists beyond all doubt. Pity that we insist on limited, rigid thinking to need such a drastic, dramatic pool of proof.

“To be or not to be; that is the question.” If quantum physics proves the existence of Infinity by paring everything down to the smallest element, then we are faced with a different dilemma: If the infinite is the real reality, then anything finite is the illusion!

None of this stuff is new. It’s all been contemplated from Plato on down through the ages of man. All the philosophers spent their lives spewing mountains of abstract wisdom, saying the same things in different ways, searching for a way that will open the eyes of everyone to finding the truth of existence for themselves. Why not? We’re all entitled, it is our right, to live a life of meaning and purpose.

Fire exists. Ask anyone who’s house burned to the ground. We can’t see the wind, yet we can feel it on our skin and watch trees bend over as though gripped by a gigantic, invisible hand. We think, we think constantly, but the only proof of thinking is when something visible is produced by that thinking. We all feel, some more than others, and we know we all feel, yet we have no idea what another is thinking and feeling, no matter how close we are to them. We are all conscious, at least that’s what we call it, yet it’s difficult for most to include spirit and soul within that consciousness. Why is that?

Someone said that they wake up every day, do their thing, then go to sleep every night. That’s it. Well, think about this: We only use a little over one-tenth of our brain. Don’t you think there’s something more? Or, is it simpler, safer to think that the nine-tenths of the brain not used is a residual, evolutionary artifact, like our appendix? Is it easier to believe that than strive to use more of what you have?

Yeah, I sit around and think of this stuff.

I can’t imagine what life would’ve been like if it weren’t for all the connections I’ve made over the years. Like Simon and Garfunkel used to say, “No man is an island.”

In social work, mapping out the current connections for a person is called a Life Model, and by diagramming out the people involved in a person’s life gives a good representation to work from as you explore the various positive – and negative – influences that motivate behavior. It’s working from the outside in.

Psychologists, in contrast, work from the inside out, and trace motivation behind behaviors from internal processes. How the person interprets and integrates the various stimuli occurring in life will determine how the person will most likely behave.

I tend to lean toward psychology’s theories, without ignoring sociology, though both leave me with a flat aftertaste. Something is missing; something important; something profound. Psychology and sociology are so busy arguing with each other that neither take into consideration the Big Picture: the meaning of life.

Add Darwinian anthropology into the picture, and, instead of pulling everything together with its biological predeterminations, you end up with a mountain of empty ideologies and theories that only pull us further from defining meaning.

This cognitive dissonance wouldn’t exist if monotheistic religions hadn’t played such a large role in a tortuous, imperialistic, inhumane history for the last 2,000 years. Religions would rather argue with psychology, sociology and anthropology, to discredit in full opposition. Instead of pulling us together, instead of helping us understand, religions have kept us apart and kept us from discovering the meaning of life.

Yes, the thought is huge. It’s abstract and has the feel of disconnection; too big to have an influence on or be influenced by a single person. But, is it really?

I broke through that disconnected feeling when in a class about AIDS. For every person you sleep with, they said, you sleep with every person that person slept with. The poster completely covered with all the stick figures with lines drawn between them spoke loud and clear: We are all connected.

Now, imagine what that poster would look like if it were a line drawn between you and every single person you ever interacted with during your lifetime and every single person they interacted with during their lifetime. Oh yes, we are all connected!

Eventually, all the lines come right back to you.

So, you see, no man is an island. It’s just not possible. We are all connected.

I still remember the times I would wander through the country side as a small girl, half in a dream, and imagine riding a horse instead of walking. Sometimes, I'd run as fast as I could, just to feel my hair blow back. If I found a downed tree, I'd sit on it as if it was a horse and allow myself to go deeper into my imagination.

One day, I went with a friend and her family down to an old farm in Pennsylvania. Back in those days, you could see miles of rock wall fences and farms without indoor plumbing. It was an amazing old place. It was falling apart and in horrible disrepair and I loved it. Once you maneuvered around the hole in the entrance way, there was a huge room filled with old photos and furniture, and it smelled of hundreds of years of history. It wasn't difficult for my imagination to take me back to the 1800's while at that farm, and I was living my dreams.

But, what caught my breath in my chest was this man that rode up on a big, dancing, sweating black horse when we pulled into the farm's driveway. The horse was on fire, its feet danced, the nostrils flared red inside, and the man sat that awesome horse like it was nothing. Just new to my training bra, I fell into my first crush with a bang. The sight of that horse and the man riding it was worth years of fantasies and dreams.

A few years later, I rode that horse. If you handled her with a heavy hand, she'd jig herself into that same sweating tizzy every time. When I got on her, her head dropped like an old nag and she plodded along like she was half asleep. I've always had soft hands, though I didn't know it back then, and I was a little disappointed that she didn't act all fiery for me.

Still, the Knight in Shining Armor dream was one I could swear existed in reality. I saw it with my own eyes! One day, a man on a huge horse would take me back to my fantasies and dreams. I'd hear the clank of the bit, the squeak of the leather, I'd smell the warmth of the horse and feel its power as the wind would blow through my hair.

Oh yes, that would be worth shaving my legs for...