Joey the Prophet

I have told this story before. I will repeat it because of its importance.

I worked with Joey for years. He became interested in a certain Bible reading group, and began to see signs of the End of Times everywhere in the Politics, the Weather, The Seismology, the Philosophies, the Sexual Mores around him. (Keep in mind this was 30 years ago or more!)
Joey was convinced that the End of Times was coming soon. He would refer to it in his conversation, even though his own behavior did not seem to be going under any "major overhaul": he still smoked, he drank alcohol, and he was an avid reader of skin magazines.

After about three years, things came to a climax: his wife had a serious stroke at a young age, leaving him to take care of her as well as their three kids. His life was in turmoil. After she recovered and had undergone rehabilitation, she divorced him, leaving him with custody.

Joey was right. He was focused and knew that "something evil this way comes", but like so many of us, he neglected the details. He focused too easily and too early on a script of radical change and upheaval that was quite wrong for him.

We all of us intuit the future.

Most of us leap too quickly into a set description and scenario of it, using ready-to-hand literary and religious tracts that do the heavy work of making the Intuition intelligible in language and imagery.

You have to do the work yourself.
That means that if the intuition is fearsome, you have to learn to cope with it, and not go running off to some totally inappropriate scenario of someone else's End of Times Follies. And this may be the most important reason to control Fear: to allow ourselves to write our own futures - whether they are filled with joy or suffering - we have to do it ourselves. That is the teaching of all our religious geniuses.
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