Personal armageddons

A few streets over, there is a skull-covered truck that adver­tises the end of the world on May 21, 2011.

I want to scoff, I want to take a pic­ture and post it online in June, but tonight I’ve been recon­sid­ering that.

This is not because I think it’s true (I think it’s ridicu­lous) but because I don’t want to be a hyp­ocrite. So far I’ve been blessed with ter­rific health and every­thing a person could fear to lose, and every couple years, when I rec­og­nize some mys­tery pain, or a family member has some undi­ag­nosed ill­ness, I imme­di­ately go to the worst sce­nario and inhabit it.

Shortly after my son turned 1, we rushed him to the emer­gency room because the doc­tors feared that he had menin­gitis. During the spinal tap, I was in a bath­room down the hall, men­tally attending his funeral and suf­fering mightily for it. Tonight I found myself feeling unwell, looking back­wards a couple weeks, and diag­nosing myself with the black death (am I the only one who does this?)

It’s my own per­sonal armageddon story, based on nothing. Will I be here on May 21? It’s no less shameful. I may not be here tomorrow for all I know.

I’m pretty log­ical and can pull out of it (writing this helps), or at least I know how to ques­tion my thoughts, but I don’t think I can judge people who believe in the doomsday truck so harshly any­more, because even if I don’t think such an out­look is war­ranted given past expe­ri­ence and the lack of knowl­edge on the sub­ject, I can see how they might say the exact same thing to me.

What I would say to both of us, and one thing I try to remember, is that reality is what it is, and nothing we say or believe about it in the dark­ness will change it. What we can do with our beliefs is either ter­rify our­selves, or give our­selves peace.