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wander project the reality of fear

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As is the case with most of us, there have been times in my life when I was scared—not scared in the sense of feeling trepidation. I mean fear. Stop, breathe slowly and calm down anxiety. I have felt that several times in my life. Funny, I cut my head and my arm at times when I was younger. In both cases, lots of stitches and in neither case was I afraid; I didn’t feel fear. The first time was when we had to rush our daughter to the hospital. It was the summer after she was born, and she had a staph infection. We spent a week in the hospital with her, not wanting to leave and not wanting to have to say goodbye just in case. It was an awful helpless feeling that I would have again.

The next time was when we were off to enjoy Thanksgiving with my wife’s family. We were running late all day and left Cincinnati, Ohio, around 9 am. We ended up on Thanksgiving day, not making it to Birghman, Alabama, until 8 pm. That was it he days before GPS guidance we were navigating by paper maps and got lost three times. We missed the family Thanksgiving celebration and went to bed. In the morning, we got up and drove from Birmingham, Alabama, to Destin, Florida. We were going to have a family vacation with my wife’s family on the shores of the Caribbean. The first day we were there we wandered to the art district (Destin is famous for that) we then went to bed.

The next day was a little harder. My wife didn’t feel right and stayed home. I was a little worried about her but wanted to make sure the kids had fun at the beach, so we went to the beach. When I got back, and the kids were in bed, my poor wife was hot. Her forehead felt like it was on fire. We went to bed, thinking this will pass. But around 3 am she woke me up saying I can’t stand the pain. I carried her to the car, then went back and got the two sleeping girls. I took them to my mother-in-law. Of course, she said I would watch them. I drove my wife to the hospital. By the time we got there, she couldn’t walk. I carried her into the emergency room.  My wife is one of the toughest people I know. When I put her down on the bed in the emergency room, I felt the same fear I had when my daughter was sick.

For the next four days, she was in the hospital with a staph infection. It was a horrible time. I don’t think I would have made it without my beautiful family (brother-in-law, sister-in-law stayed a day and then had to go back to work, Mother-in-law and father-in-law remained until the end)

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Written by DocAndersen

One fan, One team and a long time dream Go Cubs!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  1. We all have difficult moments to overcome. But they always go easier when the family is with us. As you mention: I don’t think I would have done it without my beautiful family (son-in-law, daughter-in-law stayed one day and then had to go back to work, mother-in-law and father-in-law stayed until the end). Today marks 1 year since the death of the man I lived with for 14 years here in Spain. I was very grateful to my eldest son’s family for traveling about 800 km to be with me at such a difficult time in my life. Such moral support is not worth the price.

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  2. Good to know your wife recovered from her infection…These times are frightening. I had times when alone with Mum when she fell on the floor and did not respond when I spoke to her.
    I got the ambulance and she was very angry with me.
    3 days later found she had pneumonia and would have died if she did not go to hospital

    Mum passed on in 1993, she did live to a good age…

    Fear is a good thing, it makes you do something..

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  3. I am glad everything worked out well in the end. I know the fears well since I am an anxiety/panic attack survivor. Tooke me a whole year but I got back on track and always watch my nerves carefully. That is a beautiful horse. I remember taking a photo of a horse and I scared the horse silly and it defecated as I took the photo. lol

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    • i am so sorry I shared this, i didn’t mean to compare this to the sad story you shared a couple of weeks ago. I guess you inspired me to examine my scary moments.

      My situation did get much better, thanks!

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    • yes you’ve lost many loved ones. it is so hard sometimes! but we continue onward. I was so scared carrying my wife across the parking lot of the hospital that morning.
      scared for three straight days.

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      • Fear that lasted for 3 days, now that is a terrible fear.

        I remember when I had a problem with the Police, that I was waiting for resolvement on, and that took more than a week, before they would respond to me. Every time that I contacted them, they would tell, me they would contact me, when they were ready to do so, not before.

        What was I feeling here for a week or more, when I had that problem, and was waiting for resolvement from the Police about it?

        Was it also fear?

        What is fear?

        Fear is the trepidatory response to futures not wanted and this can only be overcome by allowing the love to be connected firmly to the now, not to this possible future.

        We need to pull back, and love all, even as it is, and allow love to cushion each blow as it falls, not as it’s anticipated to fall in the future for us.

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          • Yes, in the end, I had to eradicate my fear with this Police issue too.

            (The problem is though that partly this fear is still with me now too, even 15 years later. I am afraid of getting bashed again, and I am afraid of the Police too.)

            I had been bashed in my shop by thugs, but the thugs, were part of a football club, pally with the Police. The story was turned around to accuse me of bashing the thug, and of my “kidnapping” his kid in my shop.

            The Police are corrupt here, in league with the gangs, and get payoffs for such friendships.

            Even a weapon was hidden in my shop, and I was also accused of possessing an illegal weapon.

            I had to employ the best solicitor in my state, and the Police then admitted to “wrongs”, on both sides.

            The corrupt Police officer came into my store, out of uniform, and brownnosed me into signing a statement, saying that both sides were at fault, but they had agreed to call it “quits”, if I did too.

            They were afraid of a court case, as I was too.

            I signed, but unfortunately, I had to close my business. I was no longer in a fit state of mind to be able to keep running it.

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          • It is funny in a way. We could almost say the same thing about love as what you said there about fear.

            Love is something we have no language for in the end. It is something we have, but cannot fully measure.

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        • That is the eternal struggle between philosophers, poets, religion and science. What is love and what is fear.

          the answer is quite easy in the end. It is all the things you miss when you close your eyes that makeup love.

          All the things make you keep your eyes closed makeup fear!

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          • I hope that discussion didn’t begin because he feared your dog…lol…

            Some new agers talk about love and fear, claiming that fear has no place in real love.

            God is love. Love is God. Perfect love casts out all fear, says the Christian Bible.

            In the context of God being only love, what could fear be, and where would it come from, then?

            I will attempt my answer to that question then.

            God is love, but fear arose when God created his creation as free individualised beings, with a separate consciousness, which remains separate, until they recombine that consciousness in God, which is being enlightened.

            Fear does not exist in God.

            All fear comes from separation from God’s love, and its complete conscious knowing in our self.

            Even having complete faith, ( at first) that this love perfectly exists in us only unconsciously, removes fear too, but when we remove fear through real trust, built on real knowing, all fear then leaves by the same backdoor that it entered through.

            i.e. We consciously decide to remove it, fear, from ourselves.

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        • there was no fear. We (Dylan and I) were out walking. We came around the corner and he was there. Dylan ran up to him like they were old friends.

          Every time we went that way (almost every day) we would walk by and check on him. He would give my dog rice candies. We spoke often of fear and the impact of fear on action.

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        • my good friend studies the social dynamics of the internet. He has found that many people feel free to be well nasty on the internet that would never do that IRL. (in real life). but that the connection on the internet when positive is good but is not as deep as the in-person connection is.

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          • That surprises me a little.

            Sometimes, I think that I can go deeper in an internet conversation than which I would ever be game to in person, so for me, I think his observation is in the reverse.

            I hardly ever go deep in person to person conversations.

            Maybe I am fooling myself though, and maybe the internet allows for a shallow connection to reach greater shallownesses, which I then think is deepness, but the in-person connection is only as deep as each party allows it to go too.

            I do not like people to see me as a deep person in person. I like to keep my cards under my sleeve, so to speak…lol…

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          • That’s true, but I wonder if the negative comments thrown at people on the Internet hurt as much as the face to face ones do. They do seem to hurt some people terribly, who can even get bullied into taking their own lives sometimes.

            A negative comment said to someone face to face is very bad too, and some people tend to remember those types of comments for all of their lives.

            I remember once when I was seated in the backseat of our family car, my mother used to place me in the middle seat, becasue I never picked fights with my brothers. I was the goody-two-shoes.

            My two brothers, one older, one younger than me would still try to fight and tease each other across me, where I was seated in the middle.

            An Aunty, who was a school teacher, was sitting next to Mum in the front seat, and she said to my Mum, that boy, meaning me, is the cause of all of the trouble, he is a sneaky little fellow, cleverly teasing both boys behind your back.

            He is the instigator of all of the trouble.

            To this day, I do not like this woman, because I know that none of what she said was true. She was a trouble-maker trying to punish the goody-two-shoes too.

            She probably could not believe that some boys liked to be good, studious, and peacemakers.

        • that is the crux of my friend’s study. in the real world, most people bite their tongue and do not say things that are said on the internet.

          so while yes in the real world things hurt a lot more, you are less likely to have (my friends world here) manhole covers thrown at you.

          On the internet, people have no problem throwing manhole covers at people.

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          • He has a point, but he does not credit the real nastiness of real bullies face-to-face too, I think.

            Or, maybe, I am behind the times, as real face-to-face bullying has reduced these days, and moved on to the internet, where manhole covers are thrown willy-nilly, at people.

            When my brother was at school, he was placed down a manhole, by the other kids, and the manhole cover placed back onto the hole.

            He could not get out, and he stayed there, in that hole all day.

            The gym teacher, a really mongrel of a guy, who also bullied my brother, knew about this, and he did nothing to help my brother either.

            Eventually, the principle, listened to my plea, and he was at last rescued, but no punishment was ever vetted out to anyone over this.

            It was seen as just boys hanky-pankying.

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        • That is what my buddy has been trying to measure for the past five years. So far he hasn’t been successful in coming up with a structure. But he has a lot of data. The negative is easier to measure than the positive.

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          • Yes, if we watch the news each night, we see the same thing there. The negative news outweighs the positive. Maybe the negative sticks out more, or people more complain about it.

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        • i think the reality of the news is that bad sells more newspapers.

          Boy saves dog from drowning.

          Versus Mayor taken off stage in handcuffs.

          more read the second than the first. Although. If find now, as I try to see the world through the lens of time, that I will read the first and skip the second.

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