Mahler’s Monday Morning Motivator # 278 – Saw VII

[Mahler]

Mahler’s Monday Morning Motivator # 278 – Saw VII

Saw VII (10-26-09)

As strange as it may seem, most people like a good scare. Yes, they actually like to be frightened. And, at no time of the year is this more apparent than Halloween. It is an amazing time of the year that finds us reveling in the bizarre and the grotesque. It seems that from every small town to every major metropolis that the world has gone just a little mad. We are presented with any number of ways to prey on our fears, and we love it. The hideous masks and costumes disappear from store shelves to be worn by eager participants in this annual insanity. Our homes are decorated happily with all the things that we, in a normal frame of mind, would find distasteful. There are spiders crawling up our walls; there are bats flying about our eaves; there are tombstones in our front yards. And we put them there.

Another sign of the season is the release of some of the year’s most horror laden movies. People flock by the millions to the theaters to be intentionally terrified by the sight of blood being coaxed, slowly from the body of a helpless victim. They munch their popcorn with one hand, gripping the armrest with the other as some villain gleefully devises a new way to torture, maim or mutilate yet another helpless soul. Their heart rates jump as the latest creature from outer space, inner space or the great beyond feeds on the brains, hearts, organs, bodies and souls of the next batch of teenagers out getting laid at the lake.

Truthfully, if you think about it, anyone from a different place or time might find it quite difficult to distinguish us from the ancient Romans sitting in the amphitheater munching grapes as the poor gladiators fought to their deaths. A toga would suit us well watching a human being ripped to shreds or inflicted with pain too gruesome to imagine. It is as though we are the populace and the theater is our coliseum. The only thing missing is the emperor with his almighty thumb deciding who will live and who will die. He’s no longer needed, because on the screens of every theater in the nation, before every fear loving moviegoer, someone is going to die. The only question is how?

Yet, in all of this; the costumes, the decorations, the movies, there is just one thing that they have in common? While they are calculated to give us a fright, they aren’t real. The spiders crawling up our walls are Styrofoam. The masks, when removed, reveal smiling, happy faces. The dead body on the screen gets up and walks to the makeup man for a touch up for the next scene and if they did a good job, you will see them in another film. We don’t have to do anything about it, but look and be frightened, if only for a few moments.

There are, in our lives, many fears that we definitely have to do something about. There are some fears that we have to take control of, besides closing our eyes or walking out of a theater. No, they are not horrifying and certainly not gruesome, but they are real and they can be, for some, a matter of life or death. There are a host of them sitting there in the back of our minds and we all can identify with a few, I am sure, and I don’t need to enumerate them. The important thing is that most of them can be conquered through learning, practice, training. A vital element missing in defeating these fears may be our own resolve, determination, and especially consistency. What you do not do often, you do not do well. And, perhaps the most profound fear that we all face is that of beginning. That in which we do not begin, is that in which we cannot fail; and that in which we cannot fail is that in which we can never succeed.

Overcome the fears and make a beginning. Want to play a game?

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Copyright 2004-2009 John R. Gesselberty. Mahler's Monday Morning Motivators (MMMM) may not be copied or used without permission of the author. All rights reserved.

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Have a Great Week & Happy Holloween!

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[Lost Dog]

Scary movies are too scary. Hold me, John.

[Mahler]

Originally Posted by Lost Dog

Scary movies are too scary. Hold me, John.

You're on your own.

[kingkop182]

Thanks, John.

This message goes well beyond fitness for me

[Ogedei]

I love scary movies. Sadly most now days are not scary and are just the schlok they make for SAW like movies.

Not to begrudge them, I would be curious how many I could make before I stopped opening at #2 at the box office.

Sadly I believe my greatest fears are the ones I can't do anything about. I try and live a healthy life, but we all know that is sometimes not enough to ward off the evils of some diseases.

Better to face what we can change head on, than to stare at the possibility that we can do nothing about.