Flight or…?
I’ve realised recently that when it comes to my own ‘fight or flight’ reflexes (to borrow from pop psychology), flight comes out on top much more often than fight. I find a lot of things adversive and when presented with them the tendency is to run away, to do something else. I’m trying to think of interesting spin to put on this phenomena but I am fairly convinced that I’m just a wimp. I mean, there’s a historical basis to this… No, I don’t mean avoiding being eaten by dinosaurs. (Not that historical.) No I mean school bullies. There was no way to bet them – at least no way that was immediately obvious to me – so I would tend to avoid them. I worked under the expectation that the short distance between two points was a straight line, so when I got out of the bus I walked as quickly and directly as I could home. Mostly to avoid the rocks being pelted at me by some charming individual.
It makes sense to avoid conflicts that you aren’t certain you can win. But what if your confidence takes a beating and you can lack the perspective and clarity to know which battles you have a chance to win? Well, everything looks terrifying. You avoid everything. You run like hell whenever something different shows up. It might be something delicious, something deeply rewarding – but why take the chance? You practice a rather foolish level of containment and there’s no joy to be had there. But it feels safe. The keyword there is feel. The state is as illusory as the feeling.
Of course it’s one thing to understand this intellectually… another entirely when you are in the moment gripped with a sense of impending potential horrors. Meh.
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