I’ve discovered that our brains often mistake excitement for anxiety. As an example, we are preparing for a family cruise to celebrate our daughter-in-law, who is turning 40. Our oldest grandchild is a pro at sailing the high seas, but for our two youngest grandchildren this will be their maiden voyage. As the clock winds down and the final preparations are made I have become excited, and looking forward to the adventure. The buzz makes it difficult to sleep, but once it comes my brain twists my feelings from ones of anticipation into ones of trepidation! I wake up having dreamt of being caught in a storm, huge rolling waves, a catastrophic Titanic event, falling overboard! You name it, I can imagine it! Though a storm could be a possibility, those other things are highly unlikely on the scale of probabilities! But what if…?
I’ve lived a life of what if’s. A pro really, having been raised by a mother who believed in being prepared for the worst. Assuming the worst was not only possible, but probable. Preparation for the worst is different that being afraid of it, yet our brains can have a difficult time distinguishing between the two.
A very long time ago I learned to scuba dive. The timing could have been better with regards to the “what ifs” that invaded my mind and caused my body to react to fear, I will admit that. It was the year following the release of the blockbuster movie, “Jaws”. Gordon Lightfoot’s song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”, about the freighter that sunk on Lake Superior the year before was at the top of the charts. That song came on the radio as we were bound for San Diego, set to board a 33 ft dive boat that was to sail at midnight, and in the morning I would sink beneath the water, testing my skills to become a certified diver. But what if our boat sunk in the inky darkness of the Pacific Ocean? What if I was attacked by a Great White Shark? Possible, but highly unlikely. Nonetheless, visions I couldn’t shake. I am here writing this, so neither of those things happened. Diving was thrilling, yet the battle with my brain caused my respirations to rise, and my heartbeat to quicken. It was hard to disentangle the excitement from the fear.
Years later my son and I rode the Metro in D.C. We were off to see the Air and Space Museum. “What if” we were mugged? We weren’t. My husband and I boarded a plane to Phoenix to visit family. “What if” we crashed? We didn’t. Years ago I was swimming in the Atlantic with my daughter. We saw something unusual several yards away, but couldn’t tell what it was. She suggested I go find out. What? “What if….”? Her response to me was, “You’ve had a good run”. We laughed. Sometimes the “what ifs” are just not worth finding out. We got out of the water.
You know why our brains can confuse the two? I looked up the word “adventure” in the thesaurus. It gave me words like hazard, endangerment, jeopardy, and peril! What?! I never thought of adventure that way. Along with those words were also venture, experience, and feat. To me those seem to be incongruent, in opposition to each other, but maybe they aren’t. Maybe they go hand in hand. Maybe that’s why when we’re excited our hearts race, and our respirations increase just like when we’re afraid. It would appear that fear and excitement are emotional cousins.
Every day we face the “what ifs” both big and small, real or imagined. Embrace or back away. It’s your choice whether it’s worth it or not. But, sometimes you don’t have a choice. Sometimes you do what you’ve gotta do regardless of the “what ifs”. Civilization is on the cusp of a technological adventure called AI. But, remember what I told you that word could mean….hazard, jeopardy, peril. It could be the greatest invention since the last greatest invention, whatever that was, or it could be the stuff our nightmares are made of. Our brain doesn’t always know the difference. If it’s the latter, and turns out to be the “Terminator” I’m prepared. I have two artificial knees. I’m hoping an AI cyborg scan will see me as a hybrid and move on. If not, well…..I’ve had a good run.