I'm watching "Star Trek" and Captain Archer gets stunned by a phaser and falls backward and just lays there sprawled out on the floor, presumably unconscious.

People are always being knocked unconscious on TV. For people who make the shows, it's an easy way to get a character out of the way temporarily. It doesn't even seem to matter to them how they do it: On TV, you can mostly just punch someone on the jaw and they're out for a good hour. If its a bar fight, you can hit them on the head with a bottle, the bottle shatters, they get a dazed look on their face (sometimes with that bird-song-sounding noise) and drop to the floor.

I've been punched in the jaw before, and it can really throw you for a loop, so I suppose you really can be knocked unconscious by it. But you'd have to be hit really, really hard, and whoever's doing the punching is probably going to really hurt his hand. Bad. As for bottles, I really do believe that they can knock you unconscious. For a really, really long time, in fact, and more likely to shatter your skull than the glass.

Anyway, the thing is, Archer gets stunned, and he falls backward on the floor. No big deal.

But I'm thinking, dang, you fall ass-backwards flat out with nothing to break your fall. On TV, this isn't any big deal. In real life, though, I have to wonder: Couldn't you crack your skull, and even die? I don't want to get into the physics of it (six-foot-tall guy, 4.1 meters per second/per second, really hard floor) but it seems to me that you could. And I didn't start thinking right here about how unrealistic TV is, as I usually do.

Instead, I'm thinking, how tall this guy is is exactly how far away from death he is. You know, you can just fall down backwards, hit your head, and die.

First of all, ok, that sucks.

Second of all, you know like people are always so afraid of things like heights and closed spaces, but the truth is, you can die just by falling down the stairs or crossing the street. People are so afraid of flying, so they drive, and more people die from driving. Why aren't more people afraid of driving? Why are people afraid of things like heights, that they rarely have to deal with?

I'm not saying we shouldn't be afraid of heights or closed spaces or flying. I think the real reason we're afraid of this stuff is that we're really afraid of dying, and that these things will kill us. But the truth is, everything can kill us. Stairs, cars, household chemicals, water, the government, other people, animals, the weather.

I mean, do we have to make up stuff to be afraid of? Here's something to be afraid of: You can choke to death on food. You can be scared of that, and then stop eating, and then starve, and then die from THAT. You could be afraid of germs that are everywhere and too small to see. Lightning that strikes arbitrarily from the sky. You could be so afraid of freezing to death that you get heatstroke and die. Or, here's a good one: You know that weird nerve thing where you don't feel any pain, and then you wind up seriously hurting yourself because you don't know you just put your hand on a waffle iron or something? You can always be afraid of that, especially if you're feeling ok. Or you could be afraid of doctors, not go see one, get sick and die because you didn't see a doctor. It's easy to die, and there's lots to be afraid of.

When you are afraid of stuff like this, it doesn't always seem irrational. After all, people really do die from falling off ladders or getting struck by lightning, so it's reasonable to be afraid of them. But other folks aren't afraid of this stuff, right? And aren't the ones who AREN'T afraid always the ones who wind up dying from it?

I think what it always comes down to is not "How afraid of this dumb crap should I be?" but "How afraid of dying should I be?"

Now, people who know me would probably think at this point that I am trying to start talking about God, and make the point that folks who believe in God aren't afraid of dying, and folks who don't, are. And that might be a great point for me to make, if I thought for one minute that it was true. But unfortunately it's not: Lots of agnostics don't worry about dying at all, and lots of folks who pray all the time are cowering in fear of meteors dropping down out of the sky.

(I say that about agnostics because, like most folks, they don't think about dying all the time. But almost everyone, when really faced with death, freaks out.)

I think all this has less to do with folks worrying about Heaven or Hell than it does with them worrying about their lives. They think their lives suck and they don't want to die losers. They want to achieve and accomplish, they want their lives to have meaning and purpose, which you can't do if you die like a dog drowning in the bathtub or choking on a gummy bear. The ironic part is that their irrational fears have them cowering in bed and not accomplishing and not acheiving, which makes it worse. Which makes them more afraid. And so on. At the end of all this talking, people seem to be more afraid of living than dying. They're basically afraid of failing.

I don't know what the answer is for people who have phobias. I do know what the answer is not, though, and that's to give them other stuff to be afraid of. I mean like, when someone is afraid of heights, to tell them that they're more likely to die crossing the street. That's adding to the worry. That would be like a blind man in the Bible wanting to be healed and instead they make him lame, too. It doesn't work to quote them statistics, either, like saying only 4% of snake bite victims die. Most likely, statistics had very little to do with causing them to be afraid and won't do much to make them any less afraid.

If any of my theories here are true, though, I can definitively say one thing. If it's true that folks are more afraid of failure than of dying, then one thing I think will help, and it's not counseling or therapy or medication. It's just doing stuff. Getting involved with other people and keeping busy. That way, you don't have time to think about what you're afraid of, or even so much about yourself at all. And if it's true that all these phobias are really just folks being afraid of not accomplishing anything with their lives, well, it solves that problem, too. Because by getting involved in stuff, they will be achieving and accomplishing.

In other words, you can't always help feeling afraid, but you can help acting afraid. And if you just asked yourself, "What would I do if I wasn't afraid?" and then go ahead and do it, then pretty soon you won't be afraid anymore.

Just some thoughts while watching "Star Trek".....