Ghosts
*Every other article on my substack will be free. Paid subscriptions receive full content*
Our youngest daughter got a fever last Friday. 99.3. This is normal. As any parent knows, young kids get day colds often. In fact, looking back on it, I suspect it was the customary fever and stuffy nose that often accompanies the ingrowth of a new tooth. Nonetheless, as you might expect for everyone in the extended family the specter of COVID immediately rose to the surface of their imaginations. We had plans. Thanksgiving was coming up and my wife had made reservations at the aquarium. All of a sudden everyone, my wife, her mother, her father, and so on, were in something of a panic that going through with all these plans would result in some ill-defined doom scenario. The baby had just seen the grandmother the day before, was she now infected? She’s an older lady, should we be ordering a casket? Had the kid picked it up at school? Was there about to be an outbreak? Some of the faculty there weren’t the thinnest of women… were they about to die? You know, co-morbidities and all. Somehow despite everyone declaring over and over again that obesity is one of the worst things to have when you get coronavirus, “going for a walk” never comes up as a protection mechanism. People at work don’t see you go for walks. A facebook picture of you out on a nice walk in the sun hits a little different than one with you in a mask. An axiom which should be taken as a given in our age is that, among all possible solutions, the one that allows for the best photo-ops will be preferred and deemed most scientific.
I digress.
I used the term “Specter” above deliberately, because that’s all it was. A ghost. A phantom. I’m not here referring to the virus, claiming it doesn’t exist. It does, but note that in the whole experience I relayed above that the only thing that has actually happened is that a toddler got a fever and a stuffy nose. Something that happened a billion times across human history before covid. Something that happens during covid. Something that, barring our Lord’s return, will happen a billion more times into the future. Kids get sick. It happens.
What made this kid getting sick different was only in the heads of the people around her. Her family, her teachers, the parents of the kids at her school. Everything else was the same as it had ever been. There was no reason to assume we were on the precipice of a local outbreak of a deadly virus. That was a ghost, a phantom in the imagination. One that terrified many people and brought some of them to tears and panic. My wife cried. The trip to the aquarium the kids had been looking forward to would have to be canceled. Thanksgiving was over. The kids would have to quarantine out of school for two weeks. The fat lady that worked there would be dead. So, also, would grandma. At the very least they’d be in the hospital. All this because something happened to a child which very normally happens to children in very normal situations. The baby went to sleep early and woke up the next morning fine, all cleared. The panic subsided. People calmed down. But for about twenty-four hours there was a little local mania around me. All over things which didn’t exist. As it turned out, grandma was not going to need a casket. Neither was the fat lady at school. Thanksgiving didn’t have to be over. There wasn’t a need to quarantine the house for two weeks. None of that was real and never had been. It had all been ghosts.
Almost everything people worry about are ghosts. Imaginary. They don’t exist. People have a bad week at work and in their head the specter of getting fired arises and they torture themselves over it, act short with their families, suddenly start penny pinching as if they’re going to the poor-house. Then it doesn’t happen. Boss sees them and claps them on the back and says “good job.” All that worry, that fear, all that damage to your personal life, health, and finances. For what? Something that wasn’t real and was never going to be. A ghost. A shade. Or maybe you lie awake at night worrying about some investment you made and whether it’s going to go belly up while you sleep. The ghost of losing your shirt haunts you, terrorizes you. Upsets your stomach and makes you sick. It’s not real. Time passes and you’re okay so that ghost dissolves and another one arises to take its place. Maybe this one is about your wife. Maybe she doesn’t love you. Maybe she’s cheating. She isn’t though, and she does. These are more of the same, ghosts that are not real caused by some minor incident that actually happened. Maybe you and her had a fight. That happened. The rest is in your head. Imaginary. The stuff torturing you didn’t happen. It’s not real.
If you’re a political person (and almost everybody is these days) you do the same thing but on a larger scale. Biden is going to come take your guns see. The vaccine is going to be mandatory. They’re going to come knock on your door and haul you away if you have somebody over for Christmas. You know this will happen because somebody said it would on Twitter. Maybe they even had a video of it happening to somebody else. You don’t know the context of that video and it doesn’t matter. It’s enough to make you anxious. It’s fertile ground for phantasms and grizzly apparitions.
Or maybe you’re black and cops are literally hunting you in the streets. Afterall, there was a guy shot the other day. Could’ve been you. Could’ve been your son. It’s bound to happen to you if you’re ever pulled over. Better not go jogging. There are racists about.
Maybe instead you prefer to live you life in constant fear and anxiety before the ghosts of fascism. That’s a popular one these days. Hitler may be long dead but his spirit haunts our world and never leaves some people alone. Or maybe you like to be scared of the Oceans rising. Or acid rain. Or AIDs. Or cancer. Or the hole in the O-zone layer. Or white supremacy. Or communism. The list never ends. There are people in this country right now convinced that if they don’t wear a mask at all times they’re going to kill a hundred people. There are people convinced that if they don’t get out in the streets and riot and burn that cops are going to kill them for the color of their skin. But again, for the most part all of this is ghosts. All that actually happened for most of these people is that they saw some words on the internet that told them to be afraid. That’s it. No white supremacist ever tried to kill them. They never killed a grandma by standing 5 feet and eleven inches away from someone at the supermarket. The cops never busted down their door (or even knocked (or even cared)) if they had people over for the holidays. Florida never sank. The Russians never dropped the bombs. By and large all the days “Terror Alert Level Orange” amounted to nothing. So it goes.
Most people spend their whole lives afraid of ghosts, which is ironic, because unlike me, most people don’t even believe in them. You can waste your life likewise, if you want to, but I wouldn’t recommend it. People often counter me here and say, “But Yoshi, bad things dohappen.” Sure. But the point is the things that actually happen are the ones you probably never saw coming and the ones that you were worried about probably never materialized. And, moreover, much of the bad things are self-fulfilling prophecy. Lots of people right now are so terrified of a virus that they’re making themselves sick. “The Covid 19” they called it some months back, referring to everybody getting fat. In the past few months we saw more black people impoverish their own neighborhoods by burning them down than we’ve ever seen harmed by the KKK. So many dudes are afraid that the gubment is coming to take their guns that they put on rather ridiculous displays that frighten normies, and make normies more afraid of them and their guns, more likely to ask politicians to take them away. Driving around with a skull decal on your truck that says Molon Labe doesn’t scream “responsible gun-owner” to the average citizen who’s never shot a rifle. My refrain always to people is “Don’t be afraid.” This is why I say that. Because what you’re worried about probably isn’t going to happen, and what is going to happen you can’t actually foresee anyway, so don’t try. You just torture yourself. That, and because the New Agers are right. You put energy and focus into a thing and you make it happen. The more you act against racism the more racist you make people. The more you fuss about a virus the more likely you are to make people sick. The more you posture about how you’re mister tough and nobody can take your stuff the more likely they are to think they need to try. Self-fulfilling prophecy. All of Satan’s power is of this nature. It’s all ghosts. He’s a merchant of fear. Of what-ifs, and what-abouts. He has nothing real to sell you. How could he? He and his demons are already dead. They’re shades themselves. Faint transparent forms of their former angelic selves.
Try for a while separating what has actually happened from what you fear might happen. Separate the real from the ghostly. It will make a difference. You’ll see more clearly and The Righteous Path will shine more brightly with less noise.
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Matthew 6:34