I do not like riding in a vehicle when I am not driving it. I found myself in a scenario the other day where I had to ride in a car with a complete stranger at the wheel. I would not say I experienced fear, but more unease, about not being in control of the car. Maybe this guy has had 150 car accidents in the last year. Maybe he really sucks at driving, or is perhaps one of these road rage people you hear about on the news. To make matters worse, he was in a rental car, so it is a vehicle he is not familiar with. Yet even worse, we were on a really busy major Texas highway. Unlike busy roads in a lot of places, where there are so many cars that its bumper to bumper slow type traffic, in Texas you can have really busy roads where everyone is going 70+ miles per hour. So to top everything else off, this guy is from out of state, so he is unfamiliar with the area and has no idea how to get to anywhere, and the entire time, he is trying to talk industry business. Also, for some unknown reason, this dude was listening to a Spanish talk radio station, and the volume was just loud enough to be annoying. All this is a perfect recipe for some sort of accident.

So after a few near misses, I started thinking about what it would be like if we got into an accident. At 70 miles per hour, it is quite likely that I would be thrown from the vehicle, or at least the car would be crunched up and pin me inside it. I do not believe that I am claustrophobic, I don't particularly mind being in small cramped spaces, so long as I am in control and I choose to be in such a scenario, but I don't think anyone would react positively to being forced into a small space without the possibility of being able to extract yourself from it.

So anyhoo, my heart started racing, and I was on the edge of my seat. Was this guy going to get me killed? That would be weird. I then started thinking about how my family would feel. It would be sad for them to have to deal with a situation where someone else was completely responsible for my being dead. Would they file a lawsuit against this person, assuming he was still alive? What if he died and I walked away unscathed, what would that be like? Could I handle being pinned in a crushed car, maybe with some serious injuries. Could I relax enough to make it through until a rescue team could extract me? That would be sme serious mind over matter work to do.

After going through all the possible outcomes over and over again, I sort of realized that there were no alternatives to what was happening. I could not get out of the car. I would also have to ride in the vehicle again on the way back to the office. So with some work, I was able to calm myself down and just accept the fact that whatever was going to happen would happen, and there is nothing I could do to change the outcome.

It made me think about fear. Is there a difference between fear and anxiety? I feel like what I experienced was anxiety. Fear, to me, is some sort of phobia of a known threat. For example, if you fear spiders, and you see a spider, you are afraid, so you have experienced fear. I do not think this some something that you can control. On the other hand, anxiety seems to occur as a reaction to something unknown, a perceived or anticipated danger. I think that fear could cause anxiety, but I think that anxiety could be controlled to prevent fear. For example, if you think a spider might be in the area, you could convince yourself that there isn't, until you know for sure.

I don't know. I can't figure it all out tonight, so I'm just gunna hang with your daughter.