The Herald - The Herald Magazine
My cut out and ditch guide to banishing fear and tailgaters
IMAGINE feeling no pain, fear or anxiety. That would be quite good. Well, one Highland lady is in that happy position. Scientists at University College London discovered she has a rare genetic mutation that keeps her free of conditions that mar all our lives, particularly mine.
The boffins hope this discovery will help humanity. It won’t. Genetic science was going to prolong our lives but has died a death itself. It was one of these “in 10 years’ time” tales that never live to see 10.
Our genes – straight cut, boot cut or skinny – are a thundering nuisance, as Stephen Fry would say. But the Highland lady’s story makes you wonder what we’d be like if our genes were less rubbish.
Stress and fear are supposedly vestiges of encounters with sabretooth tigers back in the 18th century or whenever. But nowadays they kick in when we’ve to make a speech or drive anywhere.
Recently, I encountered the maddest, most aggressive driver, like, ever. He was tailgating by millimetres, overtaking on the inside, slamming on his brakes, annoying drivers in front of and behind him. Such eejits are the motoring equivalent of keyboard warriors: steering-wheel hard men (always men).
After fearing for my safety I felt rage, another vestige from our 18th century past in the jungle.
So, emotional states can still be caused by external threats in our environment, not nowadays by sabre-tooth tigers but by slack-jawed nutters.
While we’ve left the 18thcentury jungle thousands of years behind, causes of fear and anxiety have increased. According to the best scientific intuition, in the 1950s the nutter to decent ratepayer ratio was 1:97. Now it is 1:5.
The remedy for fear and anxiety, in the continuing absence of viable genetic modification, is supposedly meditation and suchlike. Most of you will have cut out and kept my recent explosive divertissement, in which I revealed my mantra: Nothing Really Matters.
It has three different meaningless meanings depending on which word you stress, and it teaches you not to sweat the small stuff. It came to me after four pints of heavy and a pie one lunchtime when I was a boy of 21.
You say: “Pain matters, ken? Yon Highland lassie alluded to above felt no pain either.”
Aye, I’ll gie you that, though you could still say that, as life is meaningless, ultimately even pain doesn’t matter. But, yeah, it kind of does.
Which brings me to my point. Yes, there’s a point. Shut up, youse. The point is this: we’ll only be free of pain and anxiety when we die and go to yonder Heaven.
Heaven is a place, possibly imaginary, where nothing can harm you or cause pain. Therefore you feel no anxiety or fear. You say: “What about the nutters? Do they get into heaven?” Surely not. Surely the Lord shall punish them and make them burn in the fiery pits of Hell. I would.
But, aye, what if you’re sitting on your cloud and someone comes up on his and starts tailgating you while playing loud hippety-hop music?
The Lord would be too forgiving if, confronted by a nutter at the pearly gates, he said: “Right, ye can come in, as long as you stop being a nutter, ken?”
If He does, then I fear Heaven will also be a place of pain and anxiety.
Fag ends
Here’s the oddest thing. For the first time in nearly three decades, I felt like a cigarette.
Sitting in my favourite place, on a rock – sea before me, forest behind – I was seeking solace and escape from the ghastly world in one of its less monstrous parts.
It calms me doon to watch the waves and to see, in the distance, some moontains, ken?
But as I pondered, I suddenly thought: “It would be nice to smoke a cigarette here.”
Just to inhale deeply something more interesting than air and to breathe it out long and slow.
That was a thing with smoking: it could aid reflection and relaxation. Having a fag was an adjunct to pondering.
I’m not advocating the practice here. Indeed, for the avoidance of doubt: Don’t. Do. It. It definitely kills. The recent death of author Martin Amis was caused by oesophageal cancer, which also killed his close friend and my all-time intellectual and journalistic hero, Christopher Hitchens.
I hope it’s not inappropriate and clumsy of me to infer causes, but both were heavy smokers. Two dear friends of mine died the same way.
Though it’s decades since I smoked, I drink too much as it’s the only way to be happy, and it’s a risk factor for the same illness. Smoking and drinking are pleasurable.
That’s why, for indulging in them, we must die.
It’s ridiculous than neither hobby has been made safe. They can’t put a person on the Moon any more and, with vaping also now deemed unsafe, they can’t invent healthy fags either. It’s disgraceful.
In the meantime, I like to think of Martin, a devout agnostic, and Hitch, a fervent atheist, sitting on a cloud in Heaven, smoking and drinking without fear, still amicably debating the existence of God.