Happy Hallowe’en, everyone! One of the dominant themes of the holiday is to turn the scary into something safe. Often this is done by turning the scary into the funny or the cute: dressing children up like ghosts or monsters. Sometimes this is done by inuring ourselves to the scary by participating in it in a safe way: watching scary movies that we can turn off or walk away from.
For today’s challenge, I want you to think about what scares you & confront it. Like the riddikulus spell of Harry Potter’s world, force it to lose its grip on you by thinking of it in a funny way. Alternately, immerse yourself in it until you’ve built up an immunity to it and it no longer scares you.
Bonus: one of the major fears in our society is not death but age. How will you overcome the fear of aging?
1 response so far ↓
1 Raquel // Nov 20, 2007 at 12:07 am
Hi xjane,
Thanks for the bonus challenge. I’ve needed to think this through. And what have I come up with? I’m in awe of my elders. Life’s last rite of passage is…so out of our control. Which makes me wonder why all the old people I know aren’t kicking and screaming their way through? Instead, my grandmothers are usually pretty cheerful (unless you interrupt them from watching their telenovellas). Oh! And one of them is spending our inheritance by attending cool political forums. She’s 85 and just had dinner with Bill Clinton in Park City. She’s also very into being the watchdog insuring that environmental impact studies happen as they should, etc. For me the fear of aging encompasses many other fears such as vulnerability, loss, being a burden, watching the death of friends of your generation and maybe the death of your own child(ren). My biggest fear is getting to a point where instead of old & wise (or old &batty) I’ll look back and think I was a better more generous loving person when I was 19 then when i’m 89. I wish aging guaranteed improvement. But even wines that are built to age can turn to vinegar. We’ll just have to see…
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