Today we got on the subject of anxiety. Considering the fact that Israel and Iran might be on the brink of war, millions of people around the world are starving or at best struggling to survive, there is a meteorite (or some kind of giant thing) out there hurtling toward earth, and Barak Obama just might be a Muslim with a wife who isn't proud to be an American...
What-ifs came up.
He leaned sideways in a chair, clasp his sturdy hands together and made that mischievous smile that I've learned means something is cooking in that well-balanced mind.
"I was driving along Sunset (boulevard in Los Angeles) the other day in my Lexus, with the sun setting on the horizon," he said. "Now since the earth is round and it's always turning, thank goodness for gravity."
He started laughing. His glasses bounced sideways on his nose. He held his arms out in front of him making a circle, fingers touching.
"I imagined myself, in my car, falling off the earth, floating or something, just out there," he said in spurts and starts. "What would happen, if gravity just let go, and I was on the underside of the planet?"
This was funny. He wasn't anxious about it all, it was just a fanciful idea. Laughter is contagious, you know. The whole anxiety thing had taken a turn on its axis which brought up the giant rock in space problem.
Now, the big deal with this meteorite is that when it hits, it will smash to smithereens the whole city of Los Angeles, assuming that's where it hits.
"Los Angeles is this tiny little place, but the desert is this huge area," he said. "So what are the chances it will hit some relatively tiny place within a great big mass of land? It's not even going to get close until something like 2029."
He's laughing again.
Here's the point. It is possible to worry about all kinds of things, some of them really serious. But there are a lot of very capable, well trained people who are working everyday to make our world and the people who live on it, safer and more secure. Worrying, hand-wringing is pointless. Like they say at AA meetings, I'm paraphrasing here. Change what you can, let go of the rest, and know the difference.
Really now, falling off the world in your Lexus...
What do you think?
4 comments:
Hi, Lisa,
I loved this post! You're so funny, girl. I have a feeling I'm really going to enjoy your site. Keep up the good work...
Lisa Kirby
www.familyfunandfood.blogspot.com
Hi Lisa! Happy 4th! It's Shirley. I'm finally catching up on my assignments. I like your writing style as well. There are a lot of things to worry about in the world, but we can only focus on what we can fix. Mostly everything else is out ofour control. If we're so focused on worrying about our lives where's the time to live it?
Oh dear! Something really serious to worry about-- gravity turning off and floating off into space in my car.
Here in the Upper Midwest, we learn to pack survival kits for winter in the car. It contains food and drinks and blankets and aqll sorts of things to keep you alive when you slip off the road into a ditch in a blizzard, or the aftermath of one, when the plowing hasn't been done yet but is just after you've fallen into the ditch and the trcuk zipped by at 60 and flung 15 feet of snow gunk on top of your car (even though there was only 9 inches of the horrid white stuff on the road surface) -- so you need to survive until the spring thaw on whatever you have in that survival kit. Army Beef Stroganoff and freeze fried ice cream are some of the better things I've heard of being tossed into some survival kits.
Now, I have to add a space suit! and no baked beans -- I just was sent an email that said passing gas in a space suit will actually destroy the suit.
LOL
Keep up the fantastic writing here. Love to read it.
OOPS -- Suzanne mentioned typos. I should have previewed and checked my comment before posting it -- found a doozey of a typo (plus a couple of not so wonderful ones):
Freeze Fried Ice Cream!
Now there's an idea for Breyers to work on!
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