We often hear the challenge of inner-space travel being even greater than outer-space travel. Makes sense, because while the distances may be less, the depths are surely greater.
Reminiscently driving through my old neighborhood from the Chicago of the 30s & 40s, I passed a tiny fish pond in one of the backyards. Instantly a maternal memory...! When I was about nine, Mom protectively reported how "a little boy drowned in this very pond" even though it was only 18 inches deep.
She was terrified by that incident, and her terror transmitted to me. Her fear of water became my fear of water. Not her fault. Just the way it is sometime. However, on this new day I began probing deeper into my Mother's old fears. Born in the deserts of 1906 Arizona, water was a distant reality. Then at age 16, her first serious encounter when the family voyaged across the dangerous North Atlantic to visit family in Europe.
Oh, yes, now I remember...! How she would recount those perilous ocean days (it was a few years after the Titanic sank in those very same waters). One storm grew so terrifying, she recalled her Father saying, with his Arizona 6-shooter in hand, he would kill them all before letting them go down with the ship.
Now, more than 100 years after her birth and her fears, I was re-traveling that same neighborhood street. Connecting those same distant dots. Her fear of water had carried through her entire life to my entire life. Without either one of us fully understanding the process.
Yes, life is a process....! Only sometime you have to plunge dangerously deep enough to understand it. Making inner-space travel perhaps the roughest yet most rewarding trip of all. Ask your friendly family psychiatrist....!
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Not sure one should say it in the context of what you have said Jack ... but I definitely "Related" ... My mother lost two brothers to drowning one in the thirties and one during the war when his ship went down ... as a result of the pschological impact of these 'events' she also told us children morbid stories about horrific drownings a... nd she also taught me and all of my siblings how to swim before we were 5 years of age ... Yes inner space travel is sometimes quite rough ...as you say "Ask your friendly family psychiatrist....!"
ReplyDeleteGeezer ~ I suppose I'm a little biased, my son is a psychiatrist. Also the medical director of the NFL. Quite a guy...even though he never gets me free tickets!
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