The Dreaded Toy

‘Then it shall come to pass, that the sword, which ye feared, shall overtake you there in the land of Egypt, and the famine, whereof ye were afraid, shall follow close after you there in Egypt; and there ye shall die.” ~ Jeremiah 42:16


Every so often, my daughter falls in love with a new film. The latest choice is the ever popular ET, the film that conquered the hearts of young and old over two decades ago. The other day, since it was very hot outside, she asked if we could just get some popcorn and watch ET together, so we settled in and got the movie started.

It was really interesting to watch her reaction when Elliott and his brother first run into ET – she laughed and thought ET was hilarious when he got scared and screamed. Her response set my thoughts off down a path that led to the day my eldest son watched the same movie for the first time. When ET screamed, he jumped out of his skin! After that, he was afraid of ET for years, and could not even look at pictures of it.

Several years after this particularly traumatizing episode, I took him and his brother to browse ‘Toys ’r Us’ before Christmas, with the intent of gathering ideas for Santa’s list. We walked around different aisles, and looked at different toys. Suddenly, one toy fell from a top shelf and landed directly on Stephen; when I looked at the toy I held my breath…it was a stuffed ET! Michael saw it, too, and instantly glanced at his brother who, in that moment, was still trying to absorb the terrifying reality of it and had automatically turned pale as a ghost. He was frozen in panic; so much in fact, that his mouth opened and closed, and then opened again without even uttering a single word.

A teenager now, Stephen is obviously no longer afraid of a fictional character, but throughout the years I have always found it fascinating how of all the toys that could have fallen, ET had to be the one. What he was most afraid of had found a way to haunt him in the craziest of ways.

After the “ET accident” I started paying attention to the fear patterns of people I knew, including myself. It never failed – the more one was afraid of something, the more the object of their fear would materialize in their lives. I’ve known some whose biggest fear was to be penniless, and most of them struggled with money the majority of their time; I’ve met people who were afraid to be abandoned or not be loved, and somehow, they found themselves walking the very same path they dreaded. I was afraid of spiders and, somehow, there used to always be one in close proximity every time I turned around. When I got over that fear, spiders suddenly migrated away from me.

Thoughts void of emotions flow through our minds constantly, but if not paid much attention, they just become reabsorbed by the collective consciousness; however, when thoughts are fueled by a powerful emotional charge such as fear, they suddenly vibrate at a higher level, strong enough to manifest into one’s reality.

I believe that Stephen learned a hard lesson that day, one I think he will never forget. To date, he smiles whenever he sees an image of ET. His own little personal demon had come to get him, but once he was able to breathe again, he realized it was nothing he couldn’t put back on a shelf.

The Day Isabel Came to Life

With two kids home from school for the summer (one of them is visiting grandparents in Europe), personal engagements seem to find their place at the bottom of the proverbial list. When it was suggested to me by a friend that I should go meet the owner of Abagayle’s Books and Collectibles in Henderson in the hope of getting my books into her store, I called and talked to Abby, the owner.

Abby was very nice and personable, and I was amazed, after hanging up, to see that we had talked for almost an hour. We weren’t sure about dates for a signing, so I proposed to bring some books to her and try to find a day that was good for both of us.

Easy as pie, right? Think again…one day we had decided to get together, something came up for me and I had to cancel; the next attempt was killed in its infancy by my daughter being sick for almost a week, and the one after that Abby was busy with events taking place at the store that day.

We set up yet another date for this past Tuesday, and FINALLY nothing got in the way – no suddenly-formed hurricanes, middle-of-the-night emergencies or other assorted obstacles; this time no hail or high water could stop me…I was going to Henderson.

It took me a little less than an hour to get there, and only a few seconds to find a parking spot. I walked into the store, and saw a lady sitting on a chair in front of the counter; never having met Abby before, I wasn’t sure if it was her. But, the surprises were only about to begin. Another face came into vision to greet us, and when I focused on the person the voice had come from, my own voice got stuck for a moment – standing in front of me, in flesh and bones, was the perfect incarnation of one of the characters in my book. I think my brain took a few moments to fully absorb the surprise of the moment, and before I knew it, I found myself participating into a conversation with Abby and the other lady in the store.

After the customer left, Abby took me and Morgan to a small sitting area in the back of the store, where we settled into comfortable chairs and started chatting. If she had just looked like Isabel the first moment I saw her, now she even sounded like her! Similar circumstances had taken her to North Carolina, and her wisdom was not of this world. I really believe that if my daughter hadn’t gotten hungry, I would have loved to stay there and talk to her for much longer. We compared experiences, talked about our families and traditions, of life in Louisiana and North Carolina, and ultimately, I felt an incredible connection with her that couldn’t be easily explained.

After I left, Morgan fell asleep in the car, so I had ample time to think as I drove. How strange was it that I would run into someone that so incredibly resembled someone else I had made up in my own mind? She wasn’t a mere character, but a real person with a real history, whose true life destiny was very much aligned with a fictional one. I couldn’t find the link, though my mind shot in all possible directions, desperately trying to make sense of something so irrationally delightful.

And so, I came to a conclusion…could it be that we “think up” the people we are going to meet because, though we haven’t met them yet, we already know them? Could it be that we think what will happen tomorrow already happened, and our minds just haven’t accepted it yet, thus making it only available as a thought?

No one can credit or discredit such a theory, because in reality, there is a lot about the spiritual and soul realms we still don’t understand. And, ultimately, I don’t have to understand this for it to be manifesting. All I need to know is that a warm, kind character has come to life; for that, I am very grateful.

Book Alert - Are You Ready for Simpler Living?

Online or offline, we are besieged by more information and communication than our counterparts of previous generations could ever imagine. In the course of a single second, hundreds of years' worth of new information becomes available based on average human intake capacities. In other words, in the next second, more television and radio programming; more books, magazines, newspapers, and print publications; more journals, government reports, industry studies, newsletters, and fact sheets; and more advertisements, commercials, promotions, and sales pitches will be produced than anyone could intellectually ingest in the next hundred years. With each following second, the phenomenon repeats itself. On Youtube alone, thousands of hours of new video footage is added every day.

“Predictably, we've reached the stage in our socio-cultural evolution where the number of items competing for one's time and attention greatly outstrips anyone's ability to keep up. No president, prime minister, king or queen, noble laureate, head of world religion, head of a university, scientist, researcher, or guru of any sort has a lock on the future of world events and human endeavors," says Jeff Davidson. Davidson is a professional speaker and author of 56 books including his latest, Simpler Living: A Back to Basics Guide to Cleaning, Furnishing, Storing, De-cluttering, Streamlining, Organizing, and More (Skyhorse Publishing, distributed by Norton).

The bombardment has reached such epidemic levels that virtually every aspect of one's life is dominated by messages. From airport TV monitors to advertising on the wall above urinals in restrooms the spaces and places in our lives are now depositories for more messages and information to which we must attend. No arena in our professional or personal lives is unscathed. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health report No. 99-101, titled Stress at Work, reports that "The nature of work is changing at whirlwind speed. Perhaps now more than ever before, job stress poses a threat to the health of workers and, in turn, to the health organizations."

Buy an airline ticket and the federal regulations that accompany your ticket exceed 8,000 words, equivalent to two chapters of a novel. Purchase a new home and encounter a bewildering array of forms, documents, pledges, and assurances you must sign – double the number of fifteen years ago.

In autumn 1988, Davidson had his first glimmer of the coming era of complexity that now fully submerges us. "It dawned on me back then that geometric growth in population, the volume of new information generated each day, media growth in terms of technological capability and global coverage, the volume of paper generated even as electronic information capabilities began to accelerate, and the over-abundance of choices that confronted people in all aspects of their lives would lead to a future much like the one we are experiencing right now."

Davidson wrote about these developments, which he termed the “Five Mega- Realities", in his 1990 book Breathing Space: Living and Working at a Comfortable Pace in a Speed Up Society, which was revised in 2000 and again in 2007. "Information and communication overload is at the root of much of the stress and anxiety that we experience today," says Davidson. "Unfortunately, the typical person has little understanding of the larger forces at play. For people under age 30, this non-stop, 24x7 world is all they've ever known. For them, there never has been a quieter, slower pace to life. They cannot conceive of a world before ubiquitous cell phones, the Web, and cable television, let alone with less noise and about half the traffic."

Simpler Living is designed to give people a framework for gaining control of their lives. The first three chapters focus on how we arrived at this ultra-hectic pace of life. From chapter 4 on, the book takes a room-by-room and step-by-step approach to simplifying and reclaiming one's home, office, leisure activities, nutrition, and health.

Simpler Living offers more than 1,500 tips and thus serves as a reference book, rather than a book to be read cover-to-cover. "Whether it's your kitchen, living room, dining room, bathroom, den, bedroom, attic, garage, back porch, car, or any other space in your life, turn directly to that chapter to gain a bevy of ideas for achieving simplicity," says Davidson. The advice in Simpler Living has wide appeal. For example, the book includes six questions to ask yourself before buying something new. There are instructions for setting up a home office, a four-step process for curtailing paper clutter, strategies to entirely eliminate some chores, and, most vital, how to find the time to unwind.

The publisher of Simple Living took a novel approach to its production by offering it in a landscape format: is wider than taller and has a unique appeal to it, as both a reference book and a coffee table book, adorned with more than 950 full-color, breathtaking photographs. The driving idea behind the book is that it would appeal to readers of such long-standing and venerated publications such as Yankee Magazine, Better Home and Gardens, Reader's Digest, Family Circle, and Country Home, as well Money, Traditional Home, Allure, and Elle.

Davidson hopes that the real-world solutions contained in Simpler Living will enable people to end the "clutter, complexity, and chaos in their lives, and discover the peaceful, productive lifestyle that they deserve."


Note: Jeff Davidson is a NC author currently living in the Triangle.