What to Fear?

I’ve spent a good bit of my adult life playing “worst case scenario”, even when circumstances didn’t necessarily call for it. Do any of these sound familiar to you?

• Taking a seat in an airplane before takeoff, I look around to pick my primary and secondary escape routes while gauging how difficult it might be to lower my shoulder and linebacker that big guy in the Armani suit if he gets between me and the door in the unlikely event of a water landing.
• Sitting in traffic, I leave a little room between my car and the one in front of me, just in case I need to make a quick escape if a carjacker walks up or someone starts shooting from across the street.
• While driving down the highway next to a gasoline tanker truck, I speed up a little to get in front of it, because it sure would suck to be alongside the truck if it happened to explode for some reason.

When there’s something broken in your fear and anxiety wiring, these sorts of compensating behaviors don’t seem odd at all. It’s simply a way to deal with irrational emotion and assert a certain amount of control into a situation where, in reality, you have absolutely no control at all.

So it was with great interest that I read an article by John Goekler that discusses how we’re inundated by the media and polling with data about who the most dangerous people in the world might be, when statistically and actuarily, the most dangerous person in the world is the one who looks back at you in the mirror each morning.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, between 310,000 and 580,000 of us will commit suicide by cigarette this year. Another 260,000 to 470,000 will go in the ground due to poor diet and sedentary lifestyle. And some 85,000 of us will drink to our own departure.

The things we fear most are usually the things that happen the least. Therefore, the time, energy, and resources we invest in trying to be safe from them are a complete waste. When was the last time you heard a terrorist car bomb go off, or had anthrax mailed to you, compared to the last time you caught the flu or some infection from a co-worker?

Security is an illusion. The sooner we understand that we’re never really safe, and we begin to invest time and energy in dealing with how we react to that instead of trying to control our family, friends, and environment, the sooner we’ll begin to enjoy the wonderful things the world has to offer if we are brave enough to poke our head out and look around.

The Most Dangerous Person in the World?