Our greatest fears

lie in anticipation. Hitchcock is supposed to have said something of the kind and he knew about fear.
A summer storm is not such a dreadful thing, but the buildup to it does say a lot about how we think. It’s been raining daily hear, it almost feels like monsoon territory or a Marquez sort of place. So, no surprises… Even had a sorry-looking umbrella with me…

With some time to kill, I made my way through the park and everybody was looking at the sky - is it going to rain, can we stay just a bit longer? The fearful quicken the pace, why risk it after all? A few brave mothers let their children play a bit more…
A few fat drops fall from the sky, but there’s still sun - when that happens, in my country, we say ‘the devil is beating his wife’. I don’t know why, but anyway, the devil got tired of simply punching around his wife and unleashed a real downpour.

Remember what I said about the umbrella? Yeah, I had it, but it was in my son’s bag and he was (safe) in class… That’s the moment you’ve been dreading, you’re in the middle of the park and it’s raining and you knew you’re going to get wet - but, the moment you actually get wet it doesn’t matter anymore. You’re already drenched and the best you can do is brave it. You cannot stand still like an idiot in the pouring rain and you cannot even run for cover - try running in your wet sandals!
You just go on, one step at a time, you’ve got nothing more to fear, the ‘worst’ has already happened…

On the way home, I happened to hear two women talking about getting wet and how they enjoyed doing that as children, but not anymore, of course, and it does seem kinda odd… the carefree child and the adult burdened by worries. A child running around in the rain does not care about ruining its shoes or about the cold it might get. A child is free to enjoy the moment because it has not learned about fears. If you think about it, the adult has little to worry about a summer rain. What’s the worst that can happen, after all? Catching a cold, maybe… it’s got nothing to do with the rain, but with the memory of that time you were sick. I guess we grow more conscious of our own fragility as we grow old, something a child has no concept of. But we? We are scared of too many things, too much sun or too much rain - they’re equally bad. We tend to become so sick with worries we can no longer enjoy the simple pleasure of splashing in a puddle or anything else…
Oh, yeah, we did get home safely and just moderately wet…

Thanks for reading