Mind Bomb

 I recognized on a recent flight back from San Francisco, that I need to check in my fears and assumptions before boarding an airplane.

 

  I sat next to a Muslim woman who was wearing a hijab.  My fears all of a sudden streamed up.   A psychologist may say that I suffer from "Xenophobia!"  I would say I suffer from too much information on how others mistreat the west and how all of our lives are at jeopardy every single day.

 

 

The tension become higher when she left her back pack under her chair, and moved up to be with her manager. She wanted to review a sales booklet with her boss, but I could hear the tick tock tick tock of the imaginary bomb, locked inside her back pack frightened me. 

 

"Oh my God I am going to Die!"

 

I told myself, "Be Brave!"     

 

Paranoia started sending alarms to do something about the matter.   

"Oh my God I am going to Die!"

 

But I did not want to invade her privacy, so I just sat there and prayed. 

"Lord please protect me from the evil of the world." 

My wife Jessica laughs at the story and thinks my fears are  based on an active imagination and a saturation of alarming news coverage. It also did not help that the security at the airport was on high alert.   Also flying in a tin can is never an "Awe Shucks, lets lay back in my hammock as the world goes by "moment.   An airplane defies the laws of tradition, and proclaims that a big thing, bigger than any bird, can spread iron wings and fly in the air.   

There was s just too much stimuli to ignore things properly.

 

 

I may have acted differently if the passenger was not wearing a head scarf.    The average westerner is not any more tame than a Muslim, we all have the potential to do our brothers and sisters harm.    Just because it looks like a good, non poisonous plant does not necessarily mean that it is safe. (Just ask my dead parrot Charlie who thought he was doing good by getting stuff for his nest, only to die from poison.) We however must look at the degree of hatred that lies deep inside us and put it up to the light of truth.   

 

By the way of course it was my imagination and nothing happened on my flight... but that "Oh my God I am going to Die!" fear seemed real at least for five minutes. 

 

Then I settled down and continued reading my book "Stranger in a Strange Land".