“What’s your biggest fear?”
ave you ever skimmed the Contributors section of a fashion or lifestyle magazine? It’s where special guest editors, photographers, and industry celebrities get introduced for their involvement in the issue. Granted, the contributors aren’t typically given a lot of space for their introduction – often it’s maybe eighty words tops – but the blurbs often come across holier-than-thou, tragically hip.
Months ago I read a few that really irked me. The format wasn’t anything new. The magazine editors asked the contributors five questions each, one of them being,
What’s your biggest fear?
Each and every one of the contributors replied with,
Death
…And I rolled my eyes.
Obviously Death is scary. It is intense and mysterious, but I really don’t understand fearing it. Everybody dies, and then…they die. A select few can come back from it, but largely dead people are gone. I feel like I’ve lived/am living an awesome life, and I’ve pretty much always known that I will die. My awesome life is gonna end, and I may have regrets, but for the most part it’s a path I accept when it accepts me. You do a lot of shit, and then you go. Same with everybody else. Why worry?
So these esoteric contributors with their lofty answers just annoyed me. Other answers they gave to the rest of the questions were on the level of “My best meal of my life was truffles straight from the ground, sniffed out by my pig Quincy” and “Everything sounds so much better on 8-track.”
“Death” has to be the least original answer to “What’s your biggest fear?” that I have ever heard. I feel like people who answer “Death” are not thinking big picture. Or for some reason they think they’re entitled to more Life than everyone else based in carbon.
I don’t care what FDR said, I fear, and I fear not one thing, but two.
Shit worth fearing.
My biggest fears are rape and miscarriages.
Let’s get morbid.
Rape and miscarriages are living experiences that victims live with. They’re probably really fucking hard to live with, and that’s why I fear them.
Rape.
Friends who know me know I’m squeamish around any sort of physical contact (I’ve always been this way.), so the thought of being touched and sexually violated terrifies me. How do you get it out of your head, and how do go outside afterward? If it occurs in your house, how do you handle moments of being alone? If someone else was present, how do you learn to trust anyone with your well being?
I was groped once – alone, daylight, public – and it left me with unresolved issues because I just sucked it up and convinced myself I only had a couple days to get all the venting off my chest. In the end, I don’t think that venting was enough, and my suppressed feelings were triggered when encountered by the mere suggestion of stepping into another situation where I might be vulnerable.
If I handled that so badly, how could I possibly handle rape?
(And no, I don’t think rape is an appropriate topic for stand-up comedy. When a comedian resorts to rape, AIDS, or harassing audience members, they’re basically admitting they have no original material, or that their original material isn’t getting laughs. I don’t have time for shock jocks.)
Miscarriages.
Ellie and Carl. I’m practically already crying.
Sometimes I think Hollywood is more comfortable depicting rape than miscarriages in film. An awkward comparison, but when a character loses a baby, they often don’t show anything. It’s all entirely suggested.
Five years ago, I didn’t get babies, but then my friends started popping out adorable, bubbling things, and now I know for sure that I would like to start my own family one day. It’s not like I don’t know there are options for growing a family. I would not be averse to adopting. But the sheer thought of growing something inside me, and for whatever reason proving to be unfit to carry it through – it also terrifies me. I would take it personally, like some choice I made in the past was repaying me in karma, dealing me something I could never repair.
Back to death.
I could go on about those heavy zingers, but I think my point is clear:
There are bigger things to fear in life than death.
There are probably myriad experiences that could render a person inoperable and rob them of their surviving spirit: torture, illness, a really bad breakup. I’m not saying I’d prefer being snuffed out to being made the victim of something physically and emotionally damaging. I’m just saying I don’t believe people who say their biggest fear is death. I think they haven’t really thought about it.
4 Comments on ““What’s your biggest fear?””
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Hi, I’m Mayka.
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You were right to roll your eyes in astonishment…
I fear nothing at the moment. That means that any stressful negative thoughts that pop into my head can be identified and dealt with, thank goodness.
I regret to say that I just wrote and accidentally deleted a whole bunch of other inspired thoughts about Death and Taxes and imaginary Devils appearing in alarming ways, and I don’t have the will to dredge it all up again.
Fear to me means an adrenaline response to imminent (real or imagined) danger.
My fat dictionary adds “dread” to the definition, but I don’t like to look at it that way.
Worry and dread are unavoidable sometimes, but useless, stressful, and a waste of time. Concerns and anger about horrible realities are another story.
Thanks for opening up another juicy topic for consideration!
Wow—Just found the first comment I wrote!!! So here you go….
You are right to roll your eyes in astonishment.
Just a few ramblings…My on-line English Composition Class starts on Monday, so I can innocently ramble until then!….What is it they say about Death and Taxes? Just musing.
In my mind Fear is a physiological response to imminent danger (real or imagined) and gets us going – but, on a daily basis, it has no use that I can see. Kinda like stress.
Ditto for worry about horrible things that may or may not happen. Waste of time.
Yes, I have concerns and troubled thinking and anger when ugly or unhappy occurrences come into my radar. That is not what I call fear.
I had fearsome trepidations as a youngin about imaginary devils inappropriately materializing in my presence. I was actually scared of what my response might be to such an apparition. 6 years ago I was apprehensive about how I would feel after the swiftly approaching death of my dear father. (I was okay, perhaps because he was okay with it.) Grace does figure into a lot of mysteries.
Thank you for opening up a juicy thought-provoking can o worms –I just looked up the actual definition of Fear in my fat dictionary and, sure nuff, DREAD is also listed as a form of fear…I guess the subject of Fear can be debated for a long time.
I think as long as I don’t let any one fear (paranoia, irrational, or otherwise) govern my daily actions, then I’m fine. But part and parcel with that, I think it’s completely healthy, perhaps healthier, to openly discuss my fears once in a while.
Thanks!
Agreed — very healthy. Thanks for sharing!