THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

SHARI | 2006-10-14

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Some years ago, my husband and I were driving through the Wind River Canyon in Wyoming in December. I was driving and hit a patch of black ice. I skidded into the left lane as a Semi was barreling toward us. I remember feeling perfectly calm, thinking I'll be dead in a minute. However, we skidded onto the shoulder as the truck whizzed past. Afterwards my heart started pounding and my husband's leg was shaking as he insisted on taking the wheel. I think it's true there are worse things than dying. People also go through a lot of stupid, humiliating, medical tests, that aren't really necessary, just because they were told they might die, IMO

Comment by Shari

ME:

The shakes is another funny thing about fear. I got the shakes big time after my incident with those cute baboons, but other times I was not afraid during the actual shooting, but would get the shakes your husband did. Something in me was obviously deeply impressed by what just happened.

I got a call today from a mother whose daughter is on drugs. As I keep saying, when some Greatest Generation type demands my admiration for his overcoming his fear in combat, it makes me sick to my stomach. He wants me to feel humbled at his heroism.

But talking to this woman, I was GENUINELY humbled. This is a lady I always considered amusing because she is so self-obsessed with her own pride that she doesn't even realize it. But in this call she clearly couldn't care less about what I thought of HER.

World War II types are always indicating that anyone who wasn't in The Great War has any experience in Real Life at all.

Well, this lady was asking my advice and I really don't know what it is like to be a mother who is desperate over her child. That was something I had to take into account big time. It is true and easy to say that a child's drug problem cannot be taken care of by a parent, but I know very well that I am NOT a mother in that situation.

Dealing with real, selfless terror like that HUMBLES me the way the WWII crowd wants me to be humbled. After I listen to the genuine terror in a mother's voice, they make me even sicker to my stomach the next time I hear them.

COMMENTS (1)

#1 Pain | 2006-10-14 14:42

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When I was five, a friend the same age used to get me to climb a pine tree with him onto the roof of his house. The fear was absolutely exhilarating. He also used to jump off the roof and after he broke an arm and a leg, I was banned from his house for periods of time. Now he is a professional stuntman for Hollywood. It figures; he always did enjoy breaking bones.

Physical fear can be rejuvenating. It's hassles related to work that seem to have no redeeming value. I've had jobs so lousy that I would for example ride a bike up and down mountains to distract me from the dramas people at work had created. I stripped out the gears of two bikes and wrecked my left knee, but the physical pain from fighting a hill for four hours covered up the psychological pain of employment. I consider myself a poor swimmer, but I used to live a three-mile walk from a mountain lake that measured a mile and a half long as the crow flies. In the mountains there, there were heavy winds most of the day everyday. It took me three hours to swim up and back zigzagging against the wind. That night every inch of my spinal cord was pinched in excruciating pain and sleep I could not. But this physical pain allowed me to forget psychological pain. The physical pain was gone in three days, too.

As for fear, I always remember what my friend now the stuntman taught me: that real fear can be a big upper. If riding up the mountains was painful, riding down was a blast. It was four hours up, but forty minutes down. Fifty to sixty mph on a lightweight bicycle was a blast that beats any two-minute roller coaster silly. I knew that if I hit one rock, it was all over. That added to the fun, but I knew I would die happy and quickly.

Fear is much preferable to pain, although either can do funny things to the head. Unexpected fear is worse if it gets you to reconsider goals... I think fear is a type of pain.