In one of my blogs about getting the LifeAct O.C. spray, I got a comment from Ramirin.
He asks, “Do you live your life waiting for something bad to happen to you? ... You seem obsessed with personal protection and the feeling that you are going to be attacked sooner or later.
“My advice: enjoy every minute every day in a positive way, expect the best from people and keep on running this site and posting videos!”
This is a question I have been asked before, not only by people I have just met or who don’t know me very well but also by my family and friends.
I’ve been taught to carefully understand the question being asked so that I can give a fair and honest answer. To do that I feel I need to make sure I am as clear on the definitions of some ideals as you (my readers) are. We need to be thinking in the same terms in order for you to understand my answer.
So, before we get started, let’s look at some basic definitions.
Afraid, according to my dictionary, means “feeling fear or anxiety; frightened.”
Fear means, “an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.”
Obsessed: “preoccupy or fill the mind of (someone) continually, intrusively, and to a troubling extent.”
Paranoia: “a mental condition characterized by delusions of persecution, unwarranted jealousy, or exaggerated self-importance, typically elaborated into an organized system. It may be an aspect of chronic personality disorder, of drug abuse, or of a serious condition such as schizophrenia in which the person loses touch with reality.”
With those definitions as a jumping off point, let’s take the leap and start swimming further into my mind, beliefs, thoughts and reasoning.
Do I live my life waiting for something bad to happen to me?
Simply put: No, I do not.
Am I “preoccupied or filling my mind continually, intrusively, and to a troubling extent” with personal protection and with the feeling that I am going to be attacked sooner or later?
No, I do not believe so.
I have given the quick and easy answers but to someone who is asking those kinds of questions I’m sure simple answers far from suffice, and so I will try my best to elaborate.
There are people in this world who are blessed to never have evil touch their lives. From the day they are born until the day the die they remain isolated from how devastating and atrocious this world can really be. Though they can, and often do, experience tragedy, it is not laced with the bitterness of maliciousness.
A baby dies at birth and tragedy sweeps a family. Hearts are broken, tears are shed, lives shattered, but there is no evil to combat, nothing different that could have been done. A life was lost through tragedy, but no fault can be laid at anyone’s feet.
But, there are other people who are or have been surrounded by evil, consumed by it, their lives shattered by it. They feel the sting of contempt for it stronger than anyone because they can look back and see ways they may have been able to prevent what happened to them. They determine to do all they can to keep from falling prey to it ever again.
A man kidnaps a little girl from the supermarket while the mother pleads, screams, begs, chases and fights to the best of her ability to keep her child. The tortured, lifeless body of that child is found three days later. There is an enemy’s face to remember, a justice to be sought, a lifetime of tortured wonderings of what could have happened had things only been a little different, if maybe the mother had ran faster or had a weapon of some sort.
And finally there are those in the middle. The folk who see both sides of the fence and decide they never want to be banished to the dried and withered pastures of those who know the face of evil all too well. They learn early, through the experience of others, the lessons those blind to evil will never learn and those touched by it will never forget.
The local paper reports a story of a home-invasion two towns over from the small, quiet town in which a family lives. The father reads the story and as he reads the names of the victims slaughtered he can only see the faces of his own wife and children. A righteous indignation, a fire of will, ignites within him and he swears he will never allow such a thing to happen to his family.
Those unmolested by evil have not yet come to appreciate the horror of looking back on your actions and knowing that an outcome could have been different were you more prepared. It’s easy for them to judge an individual and see him as paranoid or obsessed when they don’t understand why that person has made the choices they have been led to make. Usually, a rendering of the facts is all that is necessary for that person’s actions to be justified and no further judgement is made.
It can be harder for the individual who has no horrid tales to tell, however, because in the minds of those who do not understand, he has no justification for being as prepared (or paranoid) as he is. He is scrutinized more carefully and looked at more suspiciously as a negative, brooding kook just waiting for something bad to happen.
But why is being prepared seen by so many as being paranoid? And when does paranoia become prepared and prepared, paranoia?
The unprepared man who gets killed while caught in a robbery after stopping at the drug store for a gallon of milk probably never expected anything like that would ever happen to him. If he were given a second chance to make some changes in his life he very well may have seen the prudence in arming himself. To the outside world, it is a tragedy. To his family it’s a devastation that could have been avoided if only... if only what? If only he hadn’t stopped for milk? If only he’d had a flat tire and never made it to the drug store at that time? If only he’d had the chance to fight back?
Conversely, the man who carries for no good reason other than he doesn’t want to end up like our drug-store-gallon-of-milk victim, is ridiculed, thought ill of, looked down upon as being delusional and paranoid but in the day that he defends himself with his weapon he is hailed as being prepared. His family gets to welcome him home one more time and they all thank God that he was prepared for what had happened.
The transition from paranoid to prepared was made because he later justified his choice.
Sadly, however, there will always be those who, to the majority crowd, will always be paranoid. They will never (thank God) have to justify their choice and so they will forever be labeled as the “weird, obsessive paranoid guy who carries a gun.”
But what makes someone paranoid or obsessed? When does thinking and preparing become agonizing and obsessing? When does a hobby become a preoccupation? When does healthy observation and discussion become unhealthy consumption of someone’s every waking thought?
Who’s to know? And who’s to judge?
Is it you?
In another piece I wrote quite awhile ago, for something else entirely, I had said that my lifelong quest seemed to be for balance. Balance, I believe, is a key to life. To never allow one thing to be too consuming to the point that it becomes what defines you.
We have all seen people like that--the people who obsess over their children, their jobs, their fears, even their dreams--and though we may be kind to them we sense that maybe something is not right with them. We understand that they need to find balance between their passions and the rest of the world. As I have said, finding that balance has been my quest.
With that in mind I’ll leave you to decide if you find balance here in the introduction to who I am. I won’t tell you if I have justification in my reasons for being so thoroughly armed just yet. I want you to consider, for yourself, after reading the following, if you think I’m paranoid or unhealthily obsessed with self defense.
My day starts at 6:30 a.m. when I take my temperature and plot it on my daily fertility calendar, hoping for a shift that indicates I’ve ovulated. You see, my husband and I are trying to have a baby and I have a medical history that seems to be making that difficult, so we are forced to try a little harder. I’m excited because I know my husband and I will be good and loving parents. We are hoping for a little boy.
For working at a gun store I’m a rather “girlie” girl in that I love makeup, hair and clothes. I search the internet for reviews on certain makeups I like and spend way too much of my free time experimenting with how to make my eyes pop just right.
I go out with good gal friends once, maybe even twice a week. Sometimes we meet for tea and coffee. Sometimes we go shopping. We take over dressing rooms while we try on dozens of different outfits and agonize over the most flattering shapes and sizes of shirts, pants, shoes and accessories. We giggle, we talk about guys and music, books and jobs, clothes, fashion, faith, love, children, decorating and television. Even though they know I carry, the subject hardly comes up.
I read and write fictional stories and when I’m having a bad day I watch “the Phantom of the Opera” with the surround sound turned up.
I cry at sappy movies I’ve seen hundreds of times. I love old silly games like pick-up-sticks, uno, old maid and go fish. I’ll play poker with anyone who will set up a game.
Tea is my passion and I have quite a ritual in preparing it. Because it is such a pleasure for me I take fine care in researching the best teas and where in the world they are grown. I spend too much money ordering them from places like Japan and India, but I don’t regret it. I read books on tea, enjoy talking about tea and have even driven my husband crazy with my passion for teapots. I have four already, who knows when I’ll have enough.
I love philosophical and deep discussions about faith, destiny, life and love.
I laugh easy and smile steadily. I enjoy meeting people and fear no conversation. I can laugh at myself and with others and don’t mind being the punch line of a joke.
I see the people I meet every day as potential friends and think differently only when they prove themselves unfriendly.
I have no enemies and I look for none.
The advice I was given was good advice, “...enjoy every minute every day in a positive way, expect the best from people...” and it is something I do every day.
I just do it all with a gun on my hip.
Does that make me obsessed?
Does my desire to keep my lovely life intact, whole and prolonged mean that I’m paranoid? Does my wish to make sure no evil can rob me of my next cup of steaming hot tea or one day seeing my baby’s face, or kissing my husband make me preoccupied?
I leave it to you to decide.