Fanciful Thinking: Falling For Fun

There's this doctor I know. He's a great friend, semi-retired,  and looks like he ought to be the serious type. He isn't. But he is smart.

Today we got on the subject of anxiety. Considering the fact that Israel and Iran might be on the brink of war, millions of people around the world are starving or at best struggling to survive, there is a meteorite (or some kind of giant thing) out there hurtling toward earth, and Barak Obama just might be a Muslim with a wife who isn't proud to be an American...

What-ifs came up. 

He leaned sideways in a chair, clasp his sturdy hands together and made that mischievous smile that I've learned means something is cooking in that well-balanced mind.

"I was driving along Sunset (boulevard in Los Angeles) the other day in my Lexus, with the sun setting on the horizon," he said. "Now since the earth is round and it's always turning, thank goodness for gravity."

He started laughing. His glasses bounced sideways on his nose. He held his arms out in front of him making a circle, fingers touching. 

"I imagined myself, in my car, falling off the earth, floating or something, just out there," he said in spurts and starts.  "What would happen, if gravity just let go, and I was on the underside of the planet?"

This was funny. He wasn't anxious about it all, it was just a fanciful idea. Laughter is contagious, you know. The whole anxiety thing had taken a turn on its axis which brought up the giant rock in space problem.

Now, the big deal with this meteorite is that when it hits, it will smash to smithereens the whole city of Los Angeles, assuming that's where it hits.

"Los Angeles is this tiny little place, but the desert is this huge area," he said. "So what are the chances it will hit some relatively tiny place within a great big mass of land? It's not even going to get close until something like 2029."

He's laughing again. 

Here's the point. It is possible to worry about all kinds of things, some of them really serious. But there are a lot of very capable, well trained people who are working everyday to make our world and the people who live on it, safer and more secure. Worrying, hand-wringing is pointless. Like they say at AA meetings, I'm paraphrasing here. Change what you can, let go of the rest, and know the difference.

Really now, falling off the world in your Lexus... 

What do you think?