Personal Hell

“What in the hell are you afraid of?”

“I ain’t afraid of nuttin’!”

“I’ll bet you’re afraid of the Devil.”

“I don’t believe in the devil. In fact, I’m not afraid of anything in this life. I’m not afraid of you, the devil, or God, or anything, not even death.”

Those were the words of a very young and very naive boy. As he drove home, there appeared above the dashboard, a small hairy spider. It crawled down his windshield very slowly. At first he thought it was on the outside, but then he remembered that he was going 55MPH and that it would have blown off. He looked closely, and realized that in fact it was on the inside. He could feel the hair on his arm stiffen and come to attention as goose bumps sprang up their full length. The spider came to rest behind the steering wheel, right in front of him, and just below his vision of the road. He divided his attention between the road and the spider, about 70% to the road and 30% to the black hairy spider with some small, lighter markings on its legs and body. It crawled around for a while on top of the dash and finally went under some papers that were lying on top of the dash. NOW HE DID NOT KNOW WHERE THE DAMNED THING WAS! The percentages were now 50/50. The road was 50%, and where he thought the spider was, 50%. He looked around the papers on the dash, then at the road, then back at the road, then the dash again. It wasn’t anywhere to be found, and moving the papers around didn’t seem to help. Where in the hell was it? Now, his attention was divided 30% on the road and 70% on the unknown whereabouts of a very small spider. Every once in a while he could catch the reflection of the spider on the inside of the windshield as it ran from underneath one paper to underneath another.

Within a very short period, his time was divided 10% on the road and 90% to the threat of the disappeared arachnid. As the unattended highway disappeared beneath the car, and the vanished spider demanded more attention, it became apparent that driving was totally impossible and he pulled to the side of the road and stopped. He then carefully pulled the papers off the dashboard until he found the spider and took out his anger on the conniving little bastard. He climbed back into the car and drove away wiping the sweat off his forehead with a napkin from the dash. Who says that there is no Hell on earth?

We all know that we have our own phobias. That irrational and persistent fear or dread of SOMETHING. Whether you are claustrophobic, acrophobic, agoraphobic, or arachniphobic or even if your fear is not an irrational one, you have a type of Hell, right here on Earth.

Some of us have more than one irrational fear and some of our fears are more along the lines of immense dislikes, or heavy discomforts, or bad irritations. Whatever your personal Hell or Hells are it is important that they are acknowledged before your Hell or Hells really do make life a “HELL ON EARTH.”