Imagination is Worse Than Reality Ever Could Be

Why my nightmare at the airport wasn't all bad

Recently I posted a harrowing story that happened to me and my family at the airport. This story was very popular and got a lot of comments. Most people saw it as a kind of a thriller.

I wouldn’t say it was thrilling. I’d say it was maddening. What’s more interesting is what it wasn’t:

It wasn’t hell. Not really. I mean, it was hell-ish, but there was an aspect to it that I wouldn’t have expected.

If you read the story, you know that we had been at the airport since 6:30 PM, it was now 2:30 AM, and we had just been asked to get off our plane because our flight was cancelled. We spent the next four hours standing in a mile-long line (yes, just about), waiting to talk to a ticket agent who could assist us in getting another flight.

One imagines how one feels in such situations. Sad? Angry? Ready to die?

Well, sort of. Yes, I was angry. Yes, I was sad.

But in the moment, it was all just happening, and I was part of it. Nothing I couldn’t get through. Just a little misery to cross.

That’s what struck me later. If you were to tell me this might happen to me, I’d be anxiety ridden and miserable. But to actually be in it, all I felt was annoyed.

That’s anxiety in a nutshell. It’s a magnification of imagination, and it feeds on itself. It’s so horrible to be anxious that we avoid the situations that would cause it.

But to be in those actual situations is often not nearly as bad as worrying about them!

Stage fright is a good example. I wonder how many of us find the approach to a performance far worse than the performance itself? I know I do.

I was just at a jam session Monday night. As a thirty-year veteran jazz musician whose been to hundreds of sessions, you’d think I’d be immune to any stage fright. Not so.

In the hour before I got the call to come up on stage I was feeling horrible. Thoughts were going through my head about how I wasn’t in the same league as the people up there, that I was going to ruin everything, that I wouldn’t be ready. I nearly walked out.

Then I got the call and I went up and played great. It was fun. Walking back out to my seat in the audience I was a completely different person. Why does this happen to me?

I dunno.

But it helped knowing that it does, that these thoughts were trigger-thoughts, not reality. It gave me the opportunity to change my focus, to attend to my breathing, to the sights and sounds in the room right in front of me. It allowed me to prepare myself to me present during the time I was playing.

Calling anxiety out, recognizing that it’s a false prophet, a phony, gives you the chance to focus on something else. Whatever you like. All you have to do is realize that whatever you have to go through could never be as bad as your imagination.