My greatest fear!


As a child my greatest fear included having to sleep in a room without light with my hyperactive imagination conjuring up ghostly figures emerging from our wardrobe with its doors partially open and releasing dinosaurs and more mythical figures bent on swallowing me!

Only God knows how many nights I lay in bed tossing and turning, covering my head under the sheets failing to fall asleep with my bizarre thoughts caused by spending time with older cousins who had a propensity to spin tall tales of ghosts and witches and wizards! I would fall asleep only to wake up the next morning to see that the huge monster of the previous night was my school uniform hung up or some other clothes in their rightful place.

My fears as I grew up were fueled by the ideas of the unseen world, I still blame the cousins who would spin such terrible tales that were innocent at midday but with the setting of the sun the characters they created became more menacing. So I was scared of going anywhere on my own in the dark. Thanks to NEPA's(Electric Company) epileptic or non-existent supply of light, it was something I had to face on a regular basis. I hated being sent on errands around the house and if I happened to be sent downstairs when NEPA had struck, I would race through the house as if the hounds of hell were after me, panting and almost breathless. I was scared of my shadow, of the dark corners where something not belonging to this world was waiting to leap out and frighten me, I was scared of dying and also scared of being buried alive!

I can laugh now at such fears but I probably can say that I have only exchanged one set of fears for another. A woman's action in this article prompted this post! Her fear of giving birth to 'another beast' was enough to make her undergo sterilization at the age of 30!  Her drastic action reminded me of how powerful the tentacles of fear are and how much joy you can be robbed of when you allow fear rule you. I had allowed the fear of darkness to rule most of my childhood and what times I should have spent pleasantly daydreaming before I dropped off to sleep were spent worrying about the monsters in the wardrobe!

 Reading through this article, I was faced with two of my 'adult' fears. The fear of being a victim of another holocaust and the fear of standing by and allowing 'others' to be victims. My first fear is an unreasonable one! The second has been reinforced by reading through stories of the holocaust and watching films like 'The boy in the Pyjamas' or Schindler's List. I then wonder what I would have done if I was in the shoes of Nazi! Would I have watched complacently while innocent souls were shipped off to the gas chambers and concentration camps or would I have been shipped alongside them for daring to dare speak up against such terrible crimes? Would I have helped hide the Jews or would I have believed saving my hide was a better alternative?

Since the holocaust is long gone, I tend to wonder whether there are issues I should be shouting out from rooftops about and which I am conveniently ignoring. I wonder if there are people I should be speaking for and I am keeping silent because I do not want to be excluded from the 'in'crowd (whatever that is). I wonder if there are causes I should be giving a lot more of my time, resources and aid to and instead I am content spending the money on pampering myself. I wonder if in a few years from now another generation will rise up and condemn my actions as 'selfish, wicked, crazy, unbelievable' the same way we rise up and condemn the perpetrators of the holocaust! I am afraid my fear will not be a ghostly apparition but a dream come true!

What do you think?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Death III

Image
In recounting my near misses, I can't but think of how many other misses I am unaware of. As a child, I was the only one who was hospitalized a few times compared to my siblings and cousins. I cannot remember if I ever felt sick enough to be at deaths door, but I do know I disliked getting injections. During one of my trips to the hospital I was to receive a Novalgin injection, for those of you old enough to remember Novalgin, it was the most painful torturous injection ever. I screamed hell and blue murder as the nurse approached with a Novalgin shot. 'I don't take injections', I lamented in my most piteous voice, you would think anyone with a heart would see the tears and back down but those nurses were a special breed. After a few minutes of my temporary madness, my father was summoned, it took just one look from him and I accepted the drilling of the syringe through my marrow (that was what it felt like) without as much as a squeak. The feeling Novalgin gave your bu...
Read more

Death 5

Image
Over the past few years, I have observed with much more attention, the passage of generations. I listened to the retirement speech of an old teacher of mine in medical school. She spoke about wondering why a classmate of hers in high school was bereft because her father had died in his 50s. Her own parents were in their 30s and according to her, she thought 50 was ancient. She tactlessly commented about her friends grief wondering why she was so distraught. She made us all laugh when she mentioned that now at the age of 70, she does not count herself as one of the ancients. My job brings me face to face with death on a daily basis and this has spurred me to put my house in order. I have had documents prepared for the disposal of my earthly benefits and I have appointed financial and health power of attorneys. I mention, like I mentioned in my last post to prevent the DMs that never fail to follow these posts, that I am not actively dying but I think preparing for death is as important ...
Read more

My Mother Tongue!

I grew up speaking English as my first language and I can tell you that is one fact I am not proud about. I remember once when we were much younger shouting out the only Yoruba words we knew as children 'olosi', 'oloriburuku' etc. My grandmother came out of the house hurriedly to put a stop to our foolishness, what on earth did we think we were doing? she asked, our reply still puts a smile on my face 'we are speaking Yoruba' we replied. My lack of proficiency in speaking Yoruba ( I can write it:) is revealed anytime I speak to my patients. When our conversation is not just me answering in monosyllables, I begin to speak rapidly in my mother tongue but by the end of my first two sentences, I hear myself stuttering and stammering and Im wondering if the patients don't think this doctor is having a sudden attack of catatonia! My Yoruba teacher in Secondary school summed up my Yoruba speaking prowess to my parents during an open day 'She is a good student b...
Read more