It's a concept that I often think about but will never understand. As we grow older, become aware of the uncertainty of society and are exposed to the dangers in the world, we become less scared. We crave the unknown and immerse ourselves in situations that place us at risk for danger, yet we do not question.
As a 13-year-old eager to become independent from my parents' supervision, I planned to see the movie Rio with a friend of mine. While my mother backed out of the driveway to pick up my friend and then drop us at the movie theatre, we got into an accident that resulted in my being hospitalized for almost a month. With a collapsed lung, bruised liver, six broken ribs and whiplash, I began to learn about the dangers of automobiles, the frequent occurrence of accidents and the lack of control over such a powerful object.
Over the next few weeks of my hospital stay, I met a girl by the name of Emma who was in the Intensive Care Unit next to mine. Emma was driving home from her night shift at Friendly's when she veered off the road and drove into a tree. After the tree collapsed on her, Emma lost her entire memory. I watched her parents enter the room with blank faces and broken hearts as a result of their own daughter's not being able to recognize them.
I feared cars. I feared others' driving and I feared being a passenger. Months after the accident, I hesitated to get in cars and once I built up the courage to do so, I held onto the seatbelt for dear life for the entirety of my travel.
Yet, when my 16th birthday rolled around and I passed my permit test, I could not be more eager to learn to drive. I begged my parents to take me to my high school parking lot to practice driving, and once I received my license, I was found most frequently behind the wheel.
I knew how dangerous driving was. I knew the uncertainty of not having control over the people around you or even the vehicle that I was supposed to be the operator of. I knew that certain weather conditions increased the number of accidents, I knew that driving late at night increased my chances of encountering drunk drivers.
During the first few months of my driving, I opened Facebook to find a video that one of my closest friend's parents posted of a driver speeding the wrong way on the highway while they were driving late at night. Thankfully, there were no cars around and they were able to switch lanes easily, but had there been a car in the lane to the right of them, they would have ended up in a head-on collision with the risk of dying. Not because they were irresponsible, not because they were distracted, but because of someone else's actions that risked their own lives.
I knew that this happened often, and I was most certainly frightened of being in another accident. After all, I knew first hand the effects of such actions and vehicles, yet I did not let that stop me. I drove to the movies in snowstorms though my parents advised me not to, I picked my friends up at two a.m. to eat at the diner and I glanced at my speedometer on the highway as I passed a State Trooper to make sure I wasn't driving too much over the speed limit.
Could it be that I have no other option but to drive and be driven around? How else will I get places? Dangerous situations are inevitable to be in. We have no control over them, but nothing is ever guaranteed to be safe. We are consumed by uncertainty and have to accept that we can not control everything that happens, though having control over things is the most powerful tool to determining our future.
Perhaps I have accepted danger. Maybe I know what can happen once I enter a car because I have lived through its most common tragedy and in turn have become a stronger and more spacially aware and careful person.
Maybe that's why we become less scared of the dark as we grow older. We know the uncertainty of the dark. We can not see through or beyond it. But we have also stopped trying to see through or beyond it and eventually enter a state of acceptance. Because not caring to discover something that is not confirmed to be discoverable is easier; it's the path of least resistance.
As we grow older, we gain knowledge. We know the possibilities of what can happen. But we do not know when it will occur or if it will ever occur, and if it does, we know that we will have little control over it. Perhaps it is not that we become less scared, but rather that we become more aware. Maybe it's not we care less, but rather that we know more.
