Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Don't Let It Consume You (Fear.)

Fear is a poison like no other. From fear, the ideas of the most extreme are composed and exercised like demons preparing for the Olympics. Fear causes people to pursue without ration or the simplest form of a plan. Fear is a disease that is easily spread in an airborne, word-of-mouth sense. Look at what fear did for us last summer, when half of the world was running around like chickens with their heads cut off. While all of the “unholu” souls ran rampid, religious organizations, small businesses with a good enough hook, and (depending on your city) t-shirt businesses and local stands were capitalizing and cashing in on FEAR. It seems that, aside from a few treacherous, heartbreaking, and phenomenon-esque disasters throughout the world, our country (USA), has raised the bar on how we fearful we should be. Yes, how frightful we should be…of NOTHING. Just a few years ago, you would have thought our country was protected by Mars Candy Company for the way the genius administration of George W. Bush implemented a colored coded terrorist threat level system. AKA the DUMBEST FUCKING INSURANCE POLICY ANYBODY COULD HAVE ASKED FOR. I can understand that system for the weather, how slow the trains in the city are running, what STD a girl has based on what color the condom turns, even the scores on a test I find repulsive, The SAT. But noooooooo! We are America, and we must go Crayola on their asses and come up with a chart that shows just how scared we are; other countries looking in surely won’t recognize that I’m sure. It’s only a matter of time before they figure out that, holy shit, yellow means “we’re so scared we may piss ourselves, blue means we ain’t afraid of you, orange means we it may be hot outside, watch out for danger somewhere around the ozone layer. Then you have the Big Kahuna of them all, RED, and red simply means “We have pissed someone off, and shit is about to get real!” With all of that said, since the system was implemented in 2002 after the horrendous 9/11 attacks not a damn thing has happened, but the threat level has continued to remain at orange until the fizzing out of the juvenile system in 2011. Yet, many Americans are still afraid. I suppose it’s the thought that we were told we should fear the unknown based on what a color always read that determined just how safe each and every one of us was, or is, or will be, or could be.
I would like to make this perfectly clear to any and everybody reading this post right now, and make sure that you understand what is going to be said, no matter if we are made of steel, anything can happen to any one of us just as much as the next person. Our next blink could be our last and a simple blind date could turn into the occurrence of a night that kills a little over a dozen and wounds plenty. With that off my chest, let me delve into the shooting that occurred in Colorado about a week and a half ago at the Aurora Theater. I ironically started working at a movie theater the exact week after this incident had occurred, I honestly thought nothing of it. I had honestly forgot about the shooting and moved on with my life. During the week the shooting happened, all I was hearing about was about how people (Americans) were going to stop going to the movies because of something that happened in a place that already has a history of gun violence and wacko’s running around bored with money and guns, which is also light-years away from most of them, unless you lived out west in a state that borders Colorado.
Fear, funny how one act of carelessness, ignorance, and selfishness stirs an entire country upside down; even if only for a few days or weeks at a time, the effect is felt like the burn after a shot of hard liquor. Everybody is gratified and stunned at first glance, but when we start to feel the slightest bit of discomfort we wish to totally take ourselves off of the invisible path that we no longer wish to walk. When 9/11 people wanted to stop shopping to local convenience stores and using flying as a mode of travel all due to fear. When the DC Sniper was around, which is the only way I am able to empathize with those who chose to say no to the movies the rest of that weekend, people did not want their kids in school or outside, nor did people want to go out to do anything such as pump gas or even go to work. That was scary because it directly affected the people of the area, and those two maniacs decided to take a brief road trip down the Atlantic Coast and kill a few more innocent victims along the way. Those three weeks were a nightmare that none of us really knew when we were going to wake up, those guys could have been right outside of our windows while we were sleep awaiting their next moment to kill and we wouldn’t have known. Just as we never really know, with anything. A guy flips out and decides to kill a person, or group of people. Shit happens. A paranoid racist decides that a kid is in the wrong neighborhood. Shit happens. A girl goes on spring break in the Caribbean and never returns home alive. Shit happens. Syria. Shit happens. You catching a flat tire after just having a brand new set of wheels put on. Shit happens. The Bush Adminstration. Shit happens. Rosie O’Donnell being born a woman instead of a man. Shit happens. Michael, Amy, and Whitney drop dead. Shit happens. Shit can and will happen in any moment and at any place in the world, even right where you stand. The fear is what can and will drive you, if you let it, to the point of quitting living your life as it was meant to be lived. Or the fear will drive you to rise above it and live your life in a more safe, aware, and appreciative manner than ever before.
In America, fear is a business model like no other; scare them first, get them to buy product to suppress fear. Only for momentary satisfaction, of course, because they need the consumer to continuously come back. We are all consumers of fear, whether it is in what we drive, to our security system in our homes, to where we choose to spend our time and money, down to education, because we all fear what life is like without knowledge right? Do not let the occurrences of some sick individuals in society ruin how you live your life and go about seeking happiness. At any given time, anything can happen, so why not let life happen and put a halt to fear consuming you.

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