It’s the source of many of our fears. Imagine waiting for your father to come home after your mother finds out you were involved in something of which they both disapproved. Vehemently! It’s where that term “waiting for the other shoe to drop” probably comes from. It boils down to knowing you are going to get punished. That is inevitable. What you don’t know is when it is coming. How it’s going to be meted out. How long it will last. All those things are creating a psychic fear that is manifold. You don’t know how much more you can take until you hear your father’s car pull into the garage. The sound of his footsteps is almost a distillation of all the ordinary sounds that can be heard from your very silent room.  You have a very fond wish to be where all that prosaic activities is occurring. Prosaic would be paradise right now. The front door can be heard opening followed by the muffled conversation of your parents. It bodes of the world of hurt your father is about to rain down on you. Then? “Get your ass down here!” Dum dum dummmmm! What follows is probably the greatest sense of relief you’ll experience in your hopefully not too brief life. You finally know! It’s going to happen and you face it even while your heart is racing as quickly as it can. As if to push past your lungs, climb up your throat and out of your mouth. Anything to get away from the corporeal part of your being that is about to get chewed out in the literal and figurative sense.
I tell this story because it demonstrates two truths that affect how I want to live my life. These truths in turn allows me to cope with the fear of all those unknowns.
First: You are ALIVE! Sidestepping the philosophical question whether you truly exist or not, there is the fact that you have an awareness. This is enough to tell you this life is happening even if all of it is a figment. You have possibilities and that is better than never having had any at all.
Second: You will DIE! This horrifies many people out there, but I find this reassuring. This doesn’t exclude the fact that it still makes me anxious at the thought of it coming. I don’t want it to come, but I accept that it will come. Accepting frees me to worry about other things more ordinary.