The Fear Factor

This morning I Googled "fear of death," mostly because my blog post of May 11 contained those words and continues to top my all-time list of readers; every day there are many more, in countries as far away as Singapore, Norway, Australia and India, making me think that it's quite widespread. 

Personally I do not have that particular fear, but I have plenty of others, believe you me, and can ill afford one more. My latest is "fear of hip replacement surgery," or more specifically, "fear of terrible pain following and catching a horrible infection during and having it go badly and needing to do it again, which does happen often enough to have a name and is called hip revision surgery."

I wondered if this were a common fear, at least among members of my generation, so once again I searched the Internet and found all sorts of interesting lists of fears that are common to mankind. One list in particular claimed to be global in scope and was called The 110 World's Worst Fears. Besides the top four fears which are quite popular --#1, snakes, #2, heights, #3, flying, and #4, public speaking, there were some surprises, such as the fact that neither "fear of dentists" nor "fear of getting stuck in an elevator with the ladies from The View" was on the list, making the whole enterprise suspect. Nevertheless I mention some of the odder ones here:

#31, fear of babies

#54, fear of numbers

#64, fear of long words

#95, fear of lakes and rivers

#100, fear of Monday mornings

#105, fear of dark shadows

#106, fear of sharp or pointed objects

I also stumbled upon some free advice about how to overcome the irksome fear of death that afflicts all but a few of us. The solution is so easy to incorporate into one’s schedule, I repeat it here verbatim: "Live life the way you're supposed to. Don't waste your time worrying about death. Instead, fill each day with as much joy as possible, and don't let little things get you down. Go outside, play with friends, or take up a new sport. Just do anything that will take your mind off dying, and put it on living.” Now why didn't we think of that?