When the ghosts come out to play

When I was a young boy, I was scared of the dark.

We lived along a rural lane and I was convinced that ghosts and goblins and other scary things came out to play at night. It didn’t help that a large walnut tree right outside my window would creak and saunter back and forth on even the calmest of nights. Nearby sheep and lambs would add to the cacophony with their baaing and bleating.

I wasn’t worried about real concerns like getting annual shots at the doctor or the neighbor’s giant dog jumping the fence and chasing me, but the dark, oh yes, that was my Kryptonite. I worried that all sorts of creatures, large and small, would come out from their hiding places and were all out to get me. They were waiting for me to fall asleep and would sneak into my room to get me.

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Flying isn’t dangerous, crashing is what’s dangerous

Oh, I eventually grew out of it, but I’ve been thinking about the things that worry us and how they don’t always make sense. They cause us stress and frustration and most times they’re for naught. They’re things beyond our control or we’ve simply given them power that they don’t really have.

For example, I watched a women a few rows up from me recently grow increasingly paler as our plane took off. She gripper her seat like her life depended on it. I wanted to list the stats to help calm her, but I feared she might snap. We worry about flying, but we’re much more likely to get hurt in a car accident on the way to the airport. Your chances of dying in a plane crash are one in 11 million, while the odds of dying in a car crash, conversely, are one in 5,000.

You’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat

Oh, we worry about other things too.

Before we went to the beach this summer, at least three people told me how they had seen news reports on the rising number of sharks on the East Coast and to watch out for them. When we finally got to our destination, I dipped my toes in the ocean and automatically started looking for Jaws. I half expected to see a school of sharks. Of course, if I would have looked at the numbers, I would have seen how silly that was.

Worldwide there is an average of 70 unprovoked shark bites every year. The chances of being bitten by a shark are small, one in 3.7 million, compared to encounters with other animals, natural disasters, and ocean-side dangers. Many more people drown in the ocean every year than are bitten by sharks.

But yet, we worry more about sharks than downing.

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Getting the Heebie-Jeebies

I didn’t realize as a kid that we all have our worries. In fact, a poll last year by a global market research firm found that many of us tend to worry about the same issues. We worry about the ease of life, money, and the future; our health and those we love; the world around us, including the climate, global relations, crime and violence, and corruption.

The funny thing is that our worries and fears are real to us. We can see them in our head. I find that the real challenge is to take back control, to remember what we can control and forget about the rest. I can’t control something that might or might not affect me years from now, but I can control my health right now and go for a short walk.

I can’t control running into a back-up on the highway, but I can stop on my way and get gas so that I’m not running on empty should something happen on the highway. Yes, I may worry about my son in college, but I can send him a text and let him know that we’re thinking of him.

Oh, I’m sure I’ll never get rid of my worries and fears completely, but I can manage how I respond to them. I write more about fears in my story, Scared of the dark, on The Heart of the Matter. I find it helps to have a flashlight or spotlight too.

Related Story:

Scared of the dark

on The Heart of the Matter