come_to_think

Conflict. I don't know how to handle it, and expect to be humiliated. So I run away if I can. But I have once or twice moved in on trouble because I couldn't imagine doing anything else.

Falling. I am not afraid of height as such (e.g., being in an airplane, looking down a cliff over a wall), but of (perceived) exposure. Looking down thru a grating is particularly unnerving. Climbing without having something to hold onto, I will be paralyzed with fright. This has gotten noticeably worse over the years. About 45 years ago I actually tried to learn to rockclimb. I took refuge in being unable to imagine the next move.

Failure of imagination is a weak form of courage and a strong form of cowardice.

A change in the political situation. Knowledge of 20th-century politics, especially in Europe but also in America, has weighed in on me the fact that it is not just criminals that are in danger from the police. I have always half supposed that someday I shall be in prison. During my life, however, my political, religious, and sexual deviations have actually become steadily less dangerous. That has led me to the notion that I should, as a sort of moral hygiene, use such a period of calm to fool myself into assuring (by putting myself on record) that when the forces of evil triumph I shall surely be on the losing side.