Once when my mommy and daddy got together, the result was that I started growing inside my mommy. After leaving the protection and services of her body, I came out. I was very immature but I began to develop the equipment, strength and size to function. My friend tells me that one of the organs in my head that grew was my amygdala (a-mig-da-la), a small part of my brain that assesses dangers and alerts me to serious ones. Maybe a young amygdala is sensitive to finer degrees of danger. If an amygdala is as old as mine is, it might not alert me very much, even to severe dangers that do have the potential to do plenty of harm.
My friend attributes my relaxed attitude to my aging brain part.
I would like to feel that I see that evil, pestilence, starvation and earthquakes, while real, are only able to threaten basically death, pain and loss. Right now, I don't welcome any of these three but I feel clear that I will have pain on and off, maybe more and more, on. I lose steadily: acuity, strength, alertness. My future prospects steadily shorten. All this is the result of the same processes that produced me and my life. They are part of the world and not hilarious. But why not enjoy the fortunes I still have? Why not foreswear fear, which only lessens the taste of the days I still have?
If this is my amygdala losing function, it feels pretty good.
On the other hand, it is dangerous to understand. The more fully I comprehend the situation of humans living on this ball, the sharper the choice. I seem to have two choices: to laugh (or at least snicker) nearly continuously at myself and others, at chance, probability, happenstance and coincidence or become enraged. My difficulty with rage is that it keeps mounting and mounting. I can see myself approaching the situation where the tigers of rage chase me faster and faster until I liquefy into butter. Besides, rage makes me less aware of what I do currently have, what I still enjoy. Seeing clearly is better.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
