Lara Zuberi's Blog - Posts Tagged "fear"
The Evolution of Fear—A Letter To My Son
The Evolution of Fear—A Letter To My Son
As a child, the only thing I feared was falling from a swing and scraping my knee—or Mom discovering my name penned on the wall in more than one corner of our home; or, as I grew older, the intermittent threat of political unrest in my city. When I was in college, I feared falling short of academic excellence, and not getting into the medical school of my first choice.
As an adult, I feared migration when I set out to traverse the globe and resigned myself to assimilate into a foreign country with a culture disparate from my own; I feared residency, but I feared completion of residency even more. I feared marriage but I feared divorce even more. I feared the hurricane--as warnings neared and sirens loomed; I feared the inevitable aging of my parents and the unavoidable physical gulfs that would separate me from friends of my childhood.
When at work, I feared making an error in judgement, that fulcrum between risk and benefit, which, for a patient was the fulcrum between hope and despair, the line between living and dying. Seeing the fear in their eyes, reflected in my own, and being unable to assuage it. I feared predicting the time of their demise—I feared being wrong in my estimate; but I feared being right even more.
The one thing I never feared was motherhood.
Once I became a mother, I feared my shortcomings—my want of dexterity as I fumbled with changing diapers; my inability to put you to sleep after every lullaby had been sung—melodies extricated mostly from memory, some composed extempore; not always discerning your needs with acumen. I feared my demanding career getting in the way of parenthood. As I took a two-year hiatus from work to care for you—I feared writing that as an explanation for the gap on my CV—though I know now that I can single-out that one as the most unfounded of all fears.
Last year, I feared Covid. The exponential rise in infections and deaths, hundreds then thousands, then hundreds of thousands of people—a microscopic, invisible sworn enemy of Mankind, causing undecipherable devastation. I feared acquiring it, becoming ill with it, and passing it on to you or your aging grandparents. I feared that it was lurking behind me, this unforgiving virus, following me like an unrelenting shadow. Stuck beneath my fingernails even after I’d washed them incessantly, skin cracked from excessive hand sanitizer—in my mind it was laced inside my ring, hiding within the seams of my coat, tucked inside the soles of my shoes. I feared it was on the steering wheel of the car, and the doorknob of our home, and it breathed with me and clung to me like a poisonous snake ready to release its venom at any moment. Day after day I’d hear of someone I knew well become infected—and worse still—pass away. The pleasant respiratory therapist we shared clinic space with for years, the one who helped others breathe-- succumbed to it after a prolonged hospitalization. I prayed earnestly in silence for three weeks while Bari Manana, your grandma’s sister, struggled to breathe, finally released from the hospital in Dubai, though with a long road to recovery ahead of her.
The isolation itself was devastating. You are diligent about wearing your mask and complulsively washing your hands, but every week there is news of someone testing positive in your school. My classmate posted heart-breaking pictures of her holding the hand of her dying mother in the ICU of a Dallas hospital, and my medical assistant returned to work a changed person after having lost both parents to this unforgiving disease. The vaccine has been a groundbreaking invention, and is changing the course of this catastrophe, but it will take long to be fully controlled, and may never be eradicated fully in our lifetimes. Amidst all this, I have feared ignorance of those who remain skeptics and, and who see masks not as life-saving guards, but rather as an obstacle to their freedom, and who will refuse the vaccine even when it is provided to them. Death by ignorance is by far worse than death by disease.
A new kind of fear is gripping me today, gnawing at my insides. It’s mixed in with the joy of seeing you growing up into the fine young man you are set out to be. It’s the fear that you will soon learn things about this world and about life that will rob you of that intelligent innocence that is so part of your being---that inquisitive voice that speaks with every thoughtful conversation, echoing alongside your unrestrained laugh.
You will learn about racism and inequality and all the hatred that possesses human beings. You will understand the abominable power of wealth, and how the world sadly revolves around it. You will read in history, about the atrocities of war, and of the suffering people of Palestine and victims of the Holocaust. You will know about the genocide of Myanmar and the catastrophe of 9/11. You will learn of lives lost in order for liberty to be found, and of nations destroyed for cities to be made. You will hear of lives lost for no legitimate reason, and lives lost for no reason at all—the stray bullet that struck a child through a broken window; the young woman who fell to her death as she took a selfie on the peak of a mountain; road rage gone out of control; the cyber-bully victim who could take no more. You will learn that every year as many people die in America of gun violence as of breast cancer—and while we have made commendable strides in science and medicine, the country you live in has declined in life expectancy from man-made ills of guns and drugs and alcohol.
You will feel the pinch of rejection and the sting of failure; you will experience inexpressible loss—you will fear remembering, but you will fear forgetting even more. You will hear the story of the photograph taken in rural Africa, a vulture advancing towards a starving child of similar proportion, and you will recoil at the thought of the child’s death, and the subsequent suicide of the photographer. You will learn that one percent of the world’s rich could have eradicated world hunger but did not; that clean water can be accessible to all the world’s population, but is not; that education is not a right but a privilege for most; that women are forced to marry, or beaten and killed for marrying of their own will; that children are abandoned and left to die in graveyards and garbage dumps; that alcohol and drugs have ruined an entire generation, that racism continues to exist decades after emancipation, and that many people are not honest or sincere or kind or well-meaning; that they are not you—and they cannot think nor feel like you--and that life can be unfair and humans can exploit others to no end--that altruism is the exception and not the rule. I fear that these thoughts will keep you up at night, as you grapple with them, and ponder over what you can do to find answers, and if answers exist at all.
I know I cannot protect you from the intrepid turns of life—nor can I shield you from all pain. It would be naïve of me to think that I can stop you from making every mistake —for no one in history went through a life of perfection, for it is the imperfections that teach us, that is how we learn and grow—and that’s how we survive and thrive. Parts of us are scratched and molded, as we go through a furnace, as we are cut with a scalpel, parts of us burn and melt and break---but then we are shaped and reshaped—and still manage to emerge whole. Every furnace burns at a different flame, and every scalpel cuts at a different depth. Not everyone’s life is the same—but everyone’s life is complicated.
I no longer have the lullabies, and soon I’ll run out of stories, the countless and often endless tales of friendship and of love and peace, with endings that are complete and happy—blissful stories that soothe you into a restful sleep, followed by dreams of butterflies in gardens, and rainbows in waterfalls, and kings in castles. Soon you will understand what is meant by no roses without thorns, and you will recognize the failures behind success, and you will decipher the discord buried in each melody and see through the hypocrisy of our patriarchal culture.
I am not a bird, that can build a nest, nor am I a butterfly that can craft a cocoon, though I wish sometimes that I were. You have seen me flinch when I put a bandaid on your hurt elbow and and an ice pack on your bruised knee. It hurts me more than if it were my own wound. I cannot pretend that sadness will never touch you—but I hope that it is transient; I cannot avert every mistake, but I hope that you will forgive yourself for making it; I cannot prevent every regret, but I hope that it will be overcome by contentment; I cannot protect you from every hurt, but I hope that sound judgement becomes your guard; I cannot convince you that life is perfect, but I hope you learn that it must be lived to its fullest; I cannot shield you from every setback; but I hope that resilience prevails.
I cannot tell you that the world isn’t flawed, but I hope that you perceive its beauty; I hope that you realize that for every Hitler, there is a Mother Teresa, and for every act of evil, there is an act of kindness. And kindness begets itself, and cannot always be paid back, but must always be paid forward; I hope you see the miracle of the sun rise and the glory of the full moon and I hope you stop to listen to the song of the nightingale, and slow your pace to inhale the scent of lavender, and pause to taste the juice of mangoes, and I hope you are granted the gift of lasting friendships and experience true love that is reciprocated in full measure. I pray that you are surrounded by the unselfish, and that you share a sizable slice of time on this earth with those who are just like you.
As a child, the only thing I feared was falling from a swing and scraping my knee—or Mom discovering my name penned on the wall in more than one corner of our home; or, as I grew older, the intermittent threat of political unrest in my city. When I was in college, I feared falling short of academic excellence, and not getting into the medical school of my first choice.
As an adult, I feared migration when I set out to traverse the globe and resigned myself to assimilate into a foreign country with a culture disparate from my own; I feared residency, but I feared completion of residency even more. I feared marriage but I feared divorce even more. I feared the hurricane--as warnings neared and sirens loomed; I feared the inevitable aging of my parents and the unavoidable physical gulfs that would separate me from friends of my childhood.
When at work, I feared making an error in judgement, that fulcrum between risk and benefit, which, for a patient was the fulcrum between hope and despair, the line between living and dying. Seeing the fear in their eyes, reflected in my own, and being unable to assuage it. I feared predicting the time of their demise—I feared being wrong in my estimate; but I feared being right even more.
The one thing I never feared was motherhood.
Once I became a mother, I feared my shortcomings—my want of dexterity as I fumbled with changing diapers; my inability to put you to sleep after every lullaby had been sung—melodies extricated mostly from memory, some composed extempore; not always discerning your needs with acumen. I feared my demanding career getting in the way of parenthood. As I took a two-year hiatus from work to care for you—I feared writing that as an explanation for the gap on my CV—though I know now that I can single-out that one as the most unfounded of all fears.
Last year, I feared Covid. The exponential rise in infections and deaths, hundreds then thousands, then hundreds of thousands of people—a microscopic, invisible sworn enemy of Mankind, causing undecipherable devastation. I feared acquiring it, becoming ill with it, and passing it on to you or your aging grandparents. I feared that it was lurking behind me, this unforgiving virus, following me like an unrelenting shadow. Stuck beneath my fingernails even after I’d washed them incessantly, skin cracked from excessive hand sanitizer—in my mind it was laced inside my ring, hiding within the seams of my coat, tucked inside the soles of my shoes. I feared it was on the steering wheel of the car, and the doorknob of our home, and it breathed with me and clung to me like a poisonous snake ready to release its venom at any moment. Day after day I’d hear of someone I knew well become infected—and worse still—pass away. The pleasant respiratory therapist we shared clinic space with for years, the one who helped others breathe-- succumbed to it after a prolonged hospitalization. I prayed earnestly in silence for three weeks while Bari Manana, your grandma’s sister, struggled to breathe, finally released from the hospital in Dubai, though with a long road to recovery ahead of her.
The isolation itself was devastating. You are diligent about wearing your mask and complulsively washing your hands, but every week there is news of someone testing positive in your school. My classmate posted heart-breaking pictures of her holding the hand of her dying mother in the ICU of a Dallas hospital, and my medical assistant returned to work a changed person after having lost both parents to this unforgiving disease. The vaccine has been a groundbreaking invention, and is changing the course of this catastrophe, but it will take long to be fully controlled, and may never be eradicated fully in our lifetimes. Amidst all this, I have feared ignorance of those who remain skeptics and, and who see masks not as life-saving guards, but rather as an obstacle to their freedom, and who will refuse the vaccine even when it is provided to them. Death by ignorance is by far worse than death by disease.
A new kind of fear is gripping me today, gnawing at my insides. It’s mixed in with the joy of seeing you growing up into the fine young man you are set out to be. It’s the fear that you will soon learn things about this world and about life that will rob you of that intelligent innocence that is so part of your being---that inquisitive voice that speaks with every thoughtful conversation, echoing alongside your unrestrained laugh.
You will learn about racism and inequality and all the hatred that possesses human beings. You will understand the abominable power of wealth, and how the world sadly revolves around it. You will read in history, about the atrocities of war, and of the suffering people of Palestine and victims of the Holocaust. You will know about the genocide of Myanmar and the catastrophe of 9/11. You will learn of lives lost in order for liberty to be found, and of nations destroyed for cities to be made. You will hear of lives lost for no legitimate reason, and lives lost for no reason at all—the stray bullet that struck a child through a broken window; the young woman who fell to her death as she took a selfie on the peak of a mountain; road rage gone out of control; the cyber-bully victim who could take no more. You will learn that every year as many people die in America of gun violence as of breast cancer—and while we have made commendable strides in science and medicine, the country you live in has declined in life expectancy from man-made ills of guns and drugs and alcohol.
You will feel the pinch of rejection and the sting of failure; you will experience inexpressible loss—you will fear remembering, but you will fear forgetting even more. You will hear the story of the photograph taken in rural Africa, a vulture advancing towards a starving child of similar proportion, and you will recoil at the thought of the child’s death, and the subsequent suicide of the photographer. You will learn that one percent of the world’s rich could have eradicated world hunger but did not; that clean water can be accessible to all the world’s population, but is not; that education is not a right but a privilege for most; that women are forced to marry, or beaten and killed for marrying of their own will; that children are abandoned and left to die in graveyards and garbage dumps; that alcohol and drugs have ruined an entire generation, that racism continues to exist decades after emancipation, and that many people are not honest or sincere or kind or well-meaning; that they are not you—and they cannot think nor feel like you--and that life can be unfair and humans can exploit others to no end--that altruism is the exception and not the rule. I fear that these thoughts will keep you up at night, as you grapple with them, and ponder over what you can do to find answers, and if answers exist at all.
I know I cannot protect you from the intrepid turns of life—nor can I shield you from all pain. It would be naïve of me to think that I can stop you from making every mistake —for no one in history went through a life of perfection, for it is the imperfections that teach us, that is how we learn and grow—and that’s how we survive and thrive. Parts of us are scratched and molded, as we go through a furnace, as we are cut with a scalpel, parts of us burn and melt and break---but then we are shaped and reshaped—and still manage to emerge whole. Every furnace burns at a different flame, and every scalpel cuts at a different depth. Not everyone’s life is the same—but everyone’s life is complicated.
I no longer have the lullabies, and soon I’ll run out of stories, the countless and often endless tales of friendship and of love and peace, with endings that are complete and happy—blissful stories that soothe you into a restful sleep, followed by dreams of butterflies in gardens, and rainbows in waterfalls, and kings in castles. Soon you will understand what is meant by no roses without thorns, and you will recognize the failures behind success, and you will decipher the discord buried in each melody and see through the hypocrisy of our patriarchal culture.
I am not a bird, that can build a nest, nor am I a butterfly that can craft a cocoon, though I wish sometimes that I were. You have seen me flinch when I put a bandaid on your hurt elbow and and an ice pack on your bruised knee. It hurts me more than if it were my own wound. I cannot pretend that sadness will never touch you—but I hope that it is transient; I cannot avert every mistake, but I hope that you will forgive yourself for making it; I cannot prevent every regret, but I hope that it will be overcome by contentment; I cannot protect you from every hurt, but I hope that sound judgement becomes your guard; I cannot convince you that life is perfect, but I hope you learn that it must be lived to its fullest; I cannot shield you from every setback; but I hope that resilience prevails.
I cannot tell you that the world isn’t flawed, but I hope that you perceive its beauty; I hope that you realize that for every Hitler, there is a Mother Teresa, and for every act of evil, there is an act of kindness. And kindness begets itself, and cannot always be paid back, but must always be paid forward; I hope you see the miracle of the sun rise and the glory of the full moon and I hope you stop to listen to the song of the nightingale, and slow your pace to inhale the scent of lavender, and pause to taste the juice of mangoes, and I hope you are granted the gift of lasting friendships and experience true love that is reciprocated in full measure. I pray that you are surrounded by the unselfish, and that you share a sizable slice of time on this earth with those who are just like you.
