Restless, Something, and Something Else

Irritable:  Easily annoyed or provoked; impatient; fretful (implies quick excitability to annoyance or anger, usually resulting from emotional tension, restlessness, physical indisposition, etc.)


I think Mr. Webster is in my living room.  I think he's looking at me as he comes up with this definition.  I think he's having a lot of trouble not inserting swear words into the definition.  "This is a family dictionary," he thinks.  "But I'd really get my point across if I could swear a little bit." (Swear: To use profane or blasphemous language; curse).


Everything and everybody is irritating me today.  I am easily provoked to irritation, which is not a good sign.  I swear (Swear: To assert or promise with great conviction or emphasis) upon a stack of Bibles to the truth of the old Three Blowhole Rule.  If in the course of a day I meet a blowhole then maybe I really did meet a blowhole; some people really are blowholes.   But if I run into someone else and decide that he's a blowhole, too, (Blowhole:  A hole through which air or gas can escape) then I figure that I have found the blowhole and the blowhole is me.


Fear:  A feeling of uneasiness; disquiet; anxiety; concern.


"This short word somehow touches about every aspect of our lives.  It was an evil and corroding thread; the fabric of our existence was shot through with it."


I like the phrase "fabric of our existence."  There's some heft to that phrase.


It's still fascinating to me how much of our lives can be wrapped up in our reaction to fear.  I think, in amazement sometimes, that it must be all there is.  All the troubles I have can be traced back to the fear that I'm not going to get what I want or I'm going to lose what I already have.


That covers a lot of ground.  


"The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear -- primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded.  Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration. (Frustrate:  in psychology, to prevent from gratifying certain impulses and desires, either conscious or unconscious).


I take this instinctual response to my environment and try to apply it to situations found in my modern world.  The ancient fear that something bigger than me and with sharper teeth is going to eat me.  More teeth would be worrisome, too; longer teeth, quicker teeth, a greater number of sets of teeth, implying that there are more hungry mouths involved.  Fear that I'll come home from a long day fending off saber-toothed tigers and Tyrannosaurus Rexes (defined as "king" in Latin) to find some other loin-clothed dude is living in my cave.  Fear that I won't have collected enough roots and berries for dinner.  


Fear of THE DARK!