I’ve been reading the stories of Flannery O’Connor lately. The secluded culture of rural Mississippi in the 1940’s along with her inventive brilliance led to the creation of phrases that capture essential human experiences. One phrase that particularly struck me relates the idea of sudden discomfort someone might experience as thoughts unravel in contemplation.

‘A whole fear quick’ effectively captures, it seems to me, the anxieties that tend to spring up as one proceeds through unsettling daily encounters, dark thoughts emerge from the past and/or uncertain anticipations invade the mind: mental meanderings in which WFQ’s bound to the surface of one’s mind with regularity.

Such uncomfortable thoughts are all controllable, of course, understood in context. These are thoughts that can be dealt with prior to any sort of panic attack. If it were otherwise, if the unpleasantness became incapacitating, it might be time to home in on thoughts of an escapist nature, thinking about existence on an uninhabited desert island while at the same time experiencing amnesia. Such a scenario would promise a serenity of sorts, think.