Fear of the Inevitable

You may hate gravity, but gravity doesn't care. -Clayton Christensen

I'm sure you've all had one; one of those dreams where you are suddenly jolted awake by that intense fear of falling, be it off a cliff or merely out of bed. Still, no matter the fall, you are awakened, often breathing heavily and scared out of your mind. However, those dreams alone do not make a person afraid of falling. Despite having a nightmare that ends in you falling off a cliff to your impending doom, you might still decide to go skydiving the very next afternoon. There are such fears as these dreams of falling that aren't really fears at all, but our body's natural reactions to forces of nature, or in this case, gravity.

However, in my case, I have a legitimate fear of falling. And it's not in a sappy way; I'm not scared of falling in love. It's not in a way such as in the dream where I'm falling off a cliff; it is in fact on my bucket list to jump out of an airplane before I did. It's not even a fear of falling down the stairs and landing on my bum.

No, the way that I'm scared of falling is very specific. I'm scared of falling in one direction, and one direction only; backward.

You can think of this literally or metaphorically, and both work in this case. I have a very large and prominent fear of falling backward out of a chair or into a pool or even attempting a back-flip on a trampoline. I'm terrified of rides that take me backward down hills and I'm scared of dentist chairs and some recliners. It might seem silly, but then again, I might have agreed with you on that point until I almost killed myself trying a simple task around three years ago that involved leaning backward. Since then, just the thought of falling in a backward motion gives me chills.

My fear also makes sense metaphorically, however. I also have a fear of waking up and having the previous day mean nothing. I fear losing progress and moving backward instead of forward. At this point in my life, I want every day to take me closer to my goal, and the fact that some days won't do that frightens me.

Then again, it is inevitable that we will all fall backward at some point in our lives, so it really shouldn't scare me as much as it does. Every man lives in fear of his mid-life crisis. Every woman lives in fear of becoming her mother. All of these little setbacks are expected, and in many cases required for us to become the people we are meant to be... but why is the fall so frightening?

What scares you most in the world either literally or metaphorically? Do you remember what made you scared of it in the first place?

Why today was awesome: Today is Tuesday, and I didn't even realize it until 11:00. Trust me, this is a good thing.

My year in numbers:

How Many Books I've Read: 2.5

How Many Times I've Lost My Key: 5

How Many Bowls of Soup I've Consumed: 8