On a chilly Thursday night, I surround myself with a cocoon of fuzzy blankets and tea paraphernalia while simultaneously taking on innumerable pages of anthropology reading, a swiftly approaching math exam and several blinking IM boxes. I close my computer, ready to really hunker down and get the schoolwork done, when my mother decides this is the perfect moment to call me.
After a few minutes of friendly banter, I bring up the topic of registration for next semester's classes being in less than three weeks. "Well," she says, "just make sure you ... you know ..." She pauses. "Take everything you have to take for ..." She pauses again. "You know."
Yes, I do know. So do the rest of us. It feels like only a year ago we were deciding between Brownie Scouts and ballet, and all of a sudden I am supposed to see my future composing itself before my very eyes in a cinematic masterpiece that would make Stanley Kubrick jealous. Believe it or not, as normal as these feelings are, they make up a legitimate phobia: fear of the unknown. You see this fear manifesting itself in all sorts of ways. Chances are, you have probably had at least one run-in with the unfamiliar.
Food is a good example of a fear of the mysterious that extends beyond future plans. Ever walked through Dewick or Carmichael trying to figure out for your self just what the heck that orange stuff is? You don't end up eating it, do you? That is because you are afraid of the unknown! We find ourselves reaching for the same foods day after tedious day. While we might consider trying the vegan tofu concoction, we always end up going for the friendly and familiar: the pizza, the pasta, the cereal, the pie. We've had it before, and we are comfortable with that. Why try something new when the classics work just fine? Better yet, do you and your friends ever walk up and down Davis or Newbury looking for a restaurant, deciding after extensive research that Hodgdon might be the best way to go?
I have noticed this phenomenon on a more global scale as well. Americans traveling through Europe are more likely to stop by a McDonald's or a Roi de Burger just for a taste of home. What is it about the familiar that constantly draws us back to it? That aroma of festering chemical waste and sweat just leaves us begging for more. We love the tacky red and yellow colors, the ones that PR experts decided made consumers the hungriest. We love the unidentifiable meat, choking on a chicken beak. What is wrong with a good ol' fashioned Manwich? Nothing ... other than the fact it may or may not be made of Man. For some reason though, this degree of "unknown" is acceptable to us because we have become overwhelmingly familiar with it.
Dating is another interesting frontier over which fear of the unknown rears its ugly head. Take blind dates, for instance. TV shows like The Fifth Wheel and Blind Date dominated the WB and other "refined" stations, but I have recently seen a rather substantial decline in this kind of programming. While reality TV is on the rise, meeting strangers has become a sort of taboo. With the news feeding us all sorts of delightful nuggets of information about child molestation, kidnapping, murder and MySpace stalkers, it is hard to imagine how anyone could even conceive of the idea behind the "blind date." With real relationships being as sacred as they are, it is very intimidating to even consider adding such a random unpredictable component to the mix.
While hookup culture may be propelling us into somewhat of a more arbitrary romantic cycle, many of us hold back for fear of the unknown. How many of you have heard some victim of a breakup talking about "commitment issues" in their significant other? This fear of commitment links straight back to fear of the unknown. We are afraid of what the future might bring us and thus take every chance available to avoid heading in that direction.
When I asked a good friend of mine, freshman Erin Van Erp, for an example of another fear of the unknown, she immediately cited her reluctance to eat or drink anything she could not see through. "I just don't know what could be in it," she said. Honestly, though. What could be in a Slurpee or a pot of minestrone? Shards of glass? Boogers? What exactly is so scary? Personally, when I eat transparent foods, I feel like I am being ripped off. Is there no other ingredient in this soup than water and liquefied chicken? When I cannot see through a tasty Alphabet Soup, I imagine all the good things (including love, hugs and kisses, rainbows and unicorns) that have been put into it that will soon make their way to the bottom of my tummy. Mmmm tasty!
So where does a fear of the unknown leave us? As far as I can see, a very bad place. We are individuals afraid of forward motion, afraid of spontaneity, afraid of all those things that make life a wonderful bucket of randomness. Yes, life is a bucket, the contents of which I hope, for all our sakes, are not transparent.
