Wildfires Trigger Death AnxietybyJohn OmahaCopyright 2019 by John Omaha All Rights Reserved
Wildfires are terrifying and deadly. October 2017's Tubbs Fire killed 22 people and destroyed 5,643 structures in California's Sonoma and surrounding counties. The following year the Camp Fire erupted in Butte County in the Sierra foothills; 85 people perished; and 18,000 structures were incinerated. Currently the Kincade Fire is slowly being extinguished in Sonoma County. No lives have been lost, but residents have been ordered to evacuate, houses have burned, property has been destroyed, and electricity has been shut off. All of these experiences, which are becoming as regular as the succession of seasons, raise the specter of death and loss from deep in people's unconscious. Psychologists call these “traumatic reminders.”
For people affected by previous fires, the current spate elicits the terror they actually felt in the past. You don't have to have been nearly killed in past fires to feel terror currently however. All humans have death terrors locked away in the catacombs of the brain where they comprise the unconscious. Like prisoners chained in a dungeon we can forget their existence although their mere presence in the psychic depths continues to affect our perceptions, feelings, behavior, and the meanings we give to events. Wildfires trigger fears of death in all humans. Some of these death terrors pre-date the development of conscious awareness. Without yet having words to name the feelings or thoughts, infant's primitive physico-chemical identities “know” that death could result from abandonment when left alone to cry themselves to sleep in a darkened room separated from a soothing parental presence.
During times like these fall wildfire events people often lose their accustomed defenses against the mortality terrors. Work is a defense against mortality terror, and when the electricity is out and the workplace is under mandatory evacuation, people feel vulnerable. People often create “immortality projects” to protect the self against the death terror. Immortality projects can be books, careers, professions, possessions, art works, fortunes, homes—things we believe will live beyond our own life span and will give a sense of immortality to us in the present.
When those are threatened, or actually lost, people realize the impermanence of their brief existence and come in touch with the anxiety and anguish they feel. The Buddha taught that impermanence is a condition of all life. Rather than running from it, psychoshamanism counsels meditating on impermanence. Embrace life and the death inherent in the living of it. Death is emotionally painful. That is a given. It is reality. However, it need not be the cause of suffering. Suffering is optional. You can choose not to suffer.