Question of the day.

   What is something others find scary but you don’t? 

   My answer: 

   I’m not really scared of death, though a lot of people seem to be. I think dying can be scary if you die in a painful or some really brutal way or something, but still, there are things that are a lot scarier to me and death itself isn’t scary to me at all, so I have to say I don’t really understand people who avoid the topic or even the word panically, avoid telling their loved ones that they’re dying or have other  superstitions around it. I think we do need to talk about this topic because it is going to happen to everyone, and we need to think about it and prepare for it and often have it in mind because our life after death is going to be immeasurably longer than the earthly one so you want to be well-prepared and live this life well to be able to live your eternal life happily. So yeah, I think part of why I’m not scared of death is simply that I’m Catholic, but also part of it is probably that I’ve been suicidal many times, with passive suicidal thoughts being a regular background noise in my brain, and I’ve had dysthymia for years and don’t really feel overly attached to this life as a result and have gotten used to thinking about death in all kinds of ways, healthy and not. If I got to choose how long I want to live, I’d definitely not be one of those people who want to live a hundred years provided I’d be healthy, which my Dad says he’d really like, and presumably many Polish people because people here always wish each other “a hundred years” on their birthdays. That would feel extremely exhausting. And actually, yeah, scary. Because I think I’m more scared of old age than death. I always say I wouldn’t like to live past 50. Which isn’t to say that I’d off myself if I were to live until my 50th birthday, but simply that if it was up to me, I would choose to die younger than that, but since it’s not, I trust that however long I’m supposed to live according to God’s will is  best for me long-term. Similarly, I am also not afraid of stuff like cemeteries or “ghosts”, if what people mean by ghosts are spirits of dead people. Ghosts as in demons and evil spirits are obviously evil so it’s natural for people to fear them, but fearing deceased people… I don’t get it. Like, I once read about a guy who believed that his house, which used to belong to his mother but he moved in there after her death with his family, was haunted by his mother’s spirit. Why would your mother’s personality suddenly change completely after her death and why she’d enjoy scaring her children and grandchildren by playing poltergeist is beyond me. The poltergeists and similar phenomena are not dead people but demonic stuff, unless your mummy has come to you to ask you to pray for her or watch over you. 

   Another thing that a lot of people I know are scared of but I myself not really are spiders. Sure, they’re yucky, and I have no liking for them, but, assuming they’re not poisonous, which those in our bit of the world are not, they don’t scare me. 

   Also, perhaps quite ironically given my rather angsty nature, I am usually not phased by horror movies. The reason is pretty simple – I just don’t see them. – And while I probably know it better than most people in this world that sound alone can be very scary, I don’t really find horror soundtracks scary usually. Granted, I’m not interested in such movies so I don’t really watch them, and perhaps there are some that I would find scary but am just not aware of their existence and don’t care. 

   How about you? 🙂