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AGING, FEAR & PANIC
People who are afraid to travel believe very earnestly in that fear. While people who aren’t afraid of travel perceive it as a false fear…on the good evidence that traveling isn’t anymore dangerous than anything else—that is if you stay away from hot spots in the world boiling over with violence. And you prevent yourself from imitating wild animal handlers.
The curious thing is that both the believers and the non-believers are right. As a feeling travel phobia is very real to the sufferer. In fact they shamefully agonize over it. But the feeling is false in the sense of being misleading. It isn’t travel that the phobic is really afraid of. It’s independence that terrifies them.
People who are afraid to travel generally have very unstable roots even though they may seem to be quite settled. To travel for them means to leap into chaos where their lack of roots is vividly exposed and challenged beyond endurance. Any new place requires that they start over again arranging a stable base of operation…while being terribly afraid.
If we feel well connected to other humans, going to strange places doesn’t threaten us so much. In fact it often feels like an invigorating challenge. But if we’re haunted by the feeling of not being very connected to anyone—which means never to have been loved properly—then to go where we know absolutely no one…is overpoweringly threatening.
There are a great many people who feel profoundly disconnected from others. Ours is a transitional age. Only four or five generations ago we were grounded in family and community. It wasn’t optional to be or not to be, except for very unusual people able to go their own way. It was standard for most humans to live in a small place. Connection was perhaps in some ways more of a liability than an asset. We needed to break the old molds.
Well we’ve done it. The only problem is we don’t know what’s going to replace it. What new connective arrangement are we going to fashion with each other? With what are we going to replace the homelessness that has become so prominent in our time, when so many people live alone? Homelessness is the curse of the travel phobic. If they had a place to belong they wouldn’t be afraid to go somewhere else.
Fear is an emotion we’ve largely turned over to religion to handle. That’s when everyone prays…when they’re afraid. In praying we are connecting to Someone.
But the homeless of all kinds have no prayer. They’re stuck in disconnection—in fear. Fear intimidates us. If it happens to us it doesn’t matter if it’s true or false. Knowing how or why we feel it doesn’t change it.
But fear can be managed by humans if someone will share it by holding us until it subsides. Those of us who are less afraid can offer our strength in that way. To disbelieve what to us is a false fear only inflames it. That someone is afraid is the only important thing to notice…and companion.
copyright© 2007, 2008 Don Fenn. All rights reserved.
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