Prophet of Doom...But Only Kinda

This morning I have realized once again that I have a great talent for making things worse than they are, for imagining the worst possible outcome in many situations.  I do this even when logic tells me that a more favorable outcome is likely.

As I begin this blog entry, I am sitting at my dining room table, looking out the patio doors and watching the culmination of events which reminded me of this Prophet-of-Doom bent of mine.  The man from the natural gas utility is out back repairing the leak in my gas meter.  This is the best possible outcome for me, both financially and  in terms of convenience.  I know this from experience.

Two years ago this month, we noticed a strong smell of gas in  the back yard.  The source of that smell, we soon learned,  was a broken gas line from the gas meter to the house, which we had to replace at our expense. This project was both expensive and excruciatingly slow, and it involved the plumbers tearing up our back yard and endangering the lives of our mature trees.  We were without natural gas --  heat and hot water -- for at least a week.  So, when we smelled gas out there again recently, I immediately remembered that bad experience and wondered if we were in for a recurrence.  After all, we had survived the Great Oklahoma Quake of 2011, so maybe the line was broken again.  As I sniffed around out back, I didn't really think so, though, because the smell really seemed to emanate from the gas meter, instead of being all over the yard as it was in 2009. It was probably just a leak in the meter,  which would be Centerpoint Energy's responsibility, not mind.  Still,  bad things do happen....

Once when a friend at work confided in me that she was dreading a family dinner she was going to attend that night because of some drama she anticipated, I attempted to comfort her by saying, "Things are always worse than you expect them to be.... Wait, no...."  I had meant to try to comfort her with the a statement of the exact opposite, that things are never as bad as you expect them to be.  I did comfort her because she laughed loudly at my parapraxis, and, as it happened, the dinner turned out fine.  But my slip really did echo the ambivalence in me about whether future events will be wonderful...or horrible.  I am always willing to allow for the possibility that the Sword of Damocles may be hanging over my head.


This fact about myself is not one that I like to admit, even to myself.  I really want to believe that the glass is half-full and I try very hard to believe it.   I tend to be optimistic when given a choice, but the real truth is that for the me, the glass is half-full, but it is also half-empty.  It could be either, who knows?

I have tried to analyze why I am so often willing to fear negative outcomes.   One part of the answer, I think, is that we are conditioned by the news media to fear things that might happen, for example their annual story about the impending End of Mankind from the Flu strain of the year.  The media loves bad news, and is not above making things seem worse than they for the sake of ratings.  Another reason for my healthy fear of the future is that I like to be in control.  If I can imagine bad things before they happen, I can be prepared, and maybe begin formulating a solution for whatever I might face.  Also, I hate surprises. 

I believe that people in general fear the future, and they use various intellectual gyrations to attempt to control it.  One example is the idea of Karma, common among Eastern philosophies.  This is the same idea expressed commonly as What Goes Around Comes Around-- you do good stuff, you get good stuff in return; you do bad stuff, you get bad stuff in return.  My favorite anecdotal evidence for the reality of Karma happened once in traffic while I was driving to work.  I made a perfectly safe, legal lane change into the lane in which a black pickup with darkly tinted windows was traveling.  This enraged the driver of the Demon Truck so much that he changed lanes himself to come along side me, hung his head out the window, blared his horned, and vehemently shot me the bird.  Of  course, he was too busy with these important activities to attend to his driving, so he slammed into the car waiting at the stoplight in front of him.  Instant Karma!  However,  the idea of Karma breaks down when you consider the driver who was rear-ended.  What did he do to deserve what he got? Nothing that I could see.  

Another way that people try to manipulate what may be coming their way is called the Law of Attraction.  This is the idea that your life events are governed by the way you think.  If you think, "I need more money," you will continue to be in need.  If, on the other hand, you think, "I will get more money," then you will focus on making that happen, and therefore, it will happen.  I think there is some truth to this.  In my own experience, if I decide that I'm having going to have a good day, my day will at least be better than if I have told myself that this was an awful day.  I just don't think that positive thinking can always change everything.  Some things are out of our hands.

That fact leads many of us to prayer, another way that people attempt to control the future. Sometimes people pray that God will prevent whatever bad thing they fear from happening.  Sometimes they attempt to manipulate Him by telling him they know he won't let that happen, that He promised good things for us.  Although it is true that we have all kinds of wonderful promises from God, there is no promise that bad things will never come our way.  To me, those kinds of prayers exhibit a lack of faith, rather than being expressions of trust in God.  I believe that prayer changes things, but often it is not the future that it changes.  Rather, it changes me to be able to accept what I believe to be unacceptable, and to be willing to follow God through things I would prevent if I could.  Things that I wish I could avoid. 

When I  was a kid, I heard that sometime in the far-distant future, in billions of years, the sun will become a supernova, and will expand in size past the orbit of the Earth.  This was scary news, and a little disturbing, but not overly so, because I knew I would not be around to experience it.  But I was never tempted to deny that it would happen.  Ideally, I wish I could adopt a similar attitude about scary circumstances I may face in the future.  While I generally believe that I have a positive future to look forward to, I do not choose to deny that bad things will also happen, or that a negative outcome may face me with the next problem I encounter.  I cannot always be a glass-is-half-full guy.  For me, that would be intellectually dishonest, and somewhat irresponsible.  So, the next time I smell gas in my back yard, I will likely wonder if the line is bad again.  But, I will also remember that this time, the glass really was half-full.