As if we didn’t have enough to be afraid of … somehow we’ve become obsessed with zombies. We even had one running for president. Yes, he made an “appearance” at the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa in 2012. Mitch Traphagen file photo.
In the waning moments of December 31, 1999, Michelle and I tiptoed out of the New Year’s Eve church service on Stanley Cay in the Bahamas; it was already in its second hour and was promising to go on much longer. A stray dog had wandered into the sanctuary and we simply followed him out.
Outside in the dark, we wandered down a crumbling seaside road toward the yacht club, where our dinghy was tied up. We decided to spend the last moments of Michelle’s birthday and the first moments of the new millennium on the beach. We could hear a boisterous party going on in the yacht club bar. The lights in the small village were on and we looked out over the peaceful water. It was a beautiful evening.
We could hear the countdown coming from inside the bar. THREE … TWO … ONE …. And then everything went dark. It seemed the entire town had shut down, and there was a sudden, uncomfortable silence. A few moments later, the lights came back on and the party resumed.
Y2K had arrived.
In the weeks leading up to the date, I knew a man, perhaps a bit foolish but no idiot, who was spending all of his extra cash preparing for that moment. He bought a shipping container and a small plot of land in rural northern Wisconsin. He buried the container and then proceeded to fill it with supplies to survive what he was certain would be a societal apocalypse — if you are over 20 years of age, I’m sure you remember the outer fringes of hysteria that surrounded that date — a time when all of our computers would suddenly be confused as to the true date and all trappings of modern society would cease, resulting in chaos and anarchy.
In looking back now, it seems that was an opening volley of a generation destined to live in fear.
After Y2K, things settled down for a while. I have no idea what the man I knew did with his buried shipping container, although if he still has it, he may well be busy stocking it anew.
September 11, 2001, graphically demonstrated to this generation that two large oceans were no barriers for extremists and the insane. Almost immediately following that came the anthrax scare, and then we had color codes for terror, codes that never did go to the “hey, don’t worry, we’re good” level. There were shoe bombers and underwear bombers and with every passing day we were told to be afraid.
And now there are both ISIS and Ebola.
And with all of that is a troubled economy that people claim is improving but somehow has left more and more people struggling or in poverty. We have a health-care crisis; we are told to be afraid of GMO foods and the plastic in water bottles.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
Sometimes it seems that fear is the only constant in life. I have no idea if people who lived through the Dark Ages knew they were in the Dark Ages, but no doubt the majority of people back then had little hope for better days.
And now we are living in what certainly should be an age of enlightenment. Democracy is on the march around the world. Technology has connected us in ways that could not possibly have been conceived of only a few decades ago, but instead of coming together, we seem to be fracturing. At a time when we could join forces and truly resolve world problems, we instead choose to fight. Or, rather, extremists and the insane choose to continue to bring on the fight. How is it that we have the world’s knowledge available to us on our smartphones yet we can’t expose madmen for who they truly are? Why do people still follow them?
Perhaps we just don’t like each other very much. But I refuse to believe that. I’m not one for conspiracies, but it certainly does appear as though there are people out there with an agenda of ensuring that we remain at each other’s throats. Just listen to talk radio or any number of politicians (the side other than yours — it doesn’t matter) as an example. There is, apparently, a great deal of money to be made in spewing dissent and outright hatred.
As for Ebola … we absolutely cannot minimize a growing crisis but in order to solve the problem, certainly this nation, as the world’s leading nation in solving problems, could use a whole lot more perspective and a whole lot less hysteria. And yes, the media needs to take the blame for a good bit of the hysteria. Like hatred, there is apparently good money to be made in peddling fear.
We are a fat and happy generation — but it seems we are at our happiest when we have something to fear. It is as though we justify our wealth by telling ourselves it is so very vulnerable. But in doing so, we rob ourselves of our true wealth. We are not alone. No matter where family and friends are, they are just a click of a mouse away. We don’t have to suffer through anything in silence. We have so much.
Yes, there are plenty of legitimate things to fear in the modern world. But in fear, we forget. Although I am a Christian, I believe the most important things are universal to all faiths, as well as to those without: love your family and neighbors; help those who need it without judgment or condition; take an extra step now and again to make things better — whether picking up someone else’s trash or by slipping a few cents or a few dollars to the person in the grocery line who came up short.
I don’t know how to fix Ebola, nor can I fix our economic woes but I can do a few things to alleviate fear.
I can show less of it. I can live more. I can do something with the knowledge that I won’t live forever and tomorrow is not guaranteed so what I do today matters more than any other day in my life. I don’t want to spend it in a bunker. I want it to be good and not just for me.
