Dangers abound. I’m scared.

So our nation is getting hit with a big pandemic again.

How does the word “pandemic” differ from the word “epidemic”?

All this mass panic and the embarrassing (or reassuring) lack of evidence of same leads me to think that funny things are going on.

If not just sheer media-fed terrorism that we inflict upon ourselves, some suggest that this is a conspiracy. Could be. I don’t know. I think people will find whatever evidence they need to support whatever they believe.

No matter what, it makes me laugh. I apologize if you get this thing — I don’t wish to make light of anything you might get that could be called the swine flu, the bird flu, the raccoon flu, the armadillo flu, the koala flu, or the chimney flu(e).

Back to the pandemic vs. epidemic question.

I guess there are some criteria by which an epidemic “mutates” into a pandemic.

A week or so, I heard 100 people had it. In the U.S., I guess. Wow! Sheer, mass hysteria abounds! Schools are closing across the nation!

And some of us are just living life as usual. In fact, I think most of us are. Who are these panicked people? I suppose many are connected with the medical industry. After all, that’s where many transmittable diseases get passed along. I go to the doc’s office with the flu, I blow my nose and touch the door handles, I rub my germy fingers through the pages of the boring hunting magazine, and I “womanhandle” the pen with which I write my check. Those who work in medical clinics would probably be justified in feeling a bit vulnerable.

But 100 cases? Head lice are pandemic! Ask me about early 2008! We finally risked our health by going to the medical clinic to get the only stuff that really worked. Prior to that, I’d invested a veritable fortune in a formula said to safely get rid of the critters that I faithfully applied to Benjamin and to myself. It didn’t work. But the (very expensive — thank God for insurance) medicine certainly did. Easily. Quickly. And relatively painlessly.

Anyway, I think most people, when they heard the news, felt a little concerned, but yawned and went on about their day, saying to themselves, “Yeah. I’ve heard that one before!”

That said, I hope you don’t get it. I don’t know any who have, though there have been some who thought they had something that might have been it.

And I heard also that they’ve “re-named” it.

I find it quite interesting to note the myriad views about medicine versus natural health care…and if anyone is prone to fear, both approaches play upon it. Unintentionally, I’m sure. Just as much as they can fan the flames of fear, they can also soothe, because they offer assistance and remedy.

In a forum that I frequent regularly, someone posted videos from natural health doctors and practititioners in opposition to the views of the medical establishment about this current virus.

In summary, medical cures were to be feared, especially vaccinations. It was believed that the vaccinations were just as harmful as the illness itself, or more so.

Logic tells me that if this were true, then wouldn’t there be a pandemic of vaccine-related illnesses, with possible long-term ill effects? The irony is that even if a vaccine is directed at a particular strain of the virus, there are other strains floating around in the atmosphere that one could fall victim to.

The natural health practitioners offer some good advice, no doubt. And so do physicians. I find, though, that the advice both offer can be almost, if not as, harmful as the illness itself. The stresses of life, and the stresses of having to pick and choose from the myriad possibilities and find the right one that will not maim you for life or kill you can be pretty darned frustrating.

And that’s what I find interesting about life. That there are so many choices. Different ones work for different people. What works for one doesn’t work for another. So we wander through all of this and wonder if there’s anything that works for everyone — and we wish there were.

Could it be this chaos is intentional — in terms of who we are and why we’re here? Could it be that this is some kind of game we’re playing to convince ourselves that all is NOT well? I mean, think about it. What if we were all really glorious, beautiful, joyful beings, and we decided that we were going to play a game of convincing ourselves that we really WEREN’T? How would we do that? If we were divine, perfectly powerful, perfectly clever, perfectly WISE beings, and we decided to create a play-place which we chose to forget all of that and orchestrate an amazing world in which the object of the game and everything about it was to fool ourselves — convince ourselves — that we really WEREN’T who we are — simply because we could — how would we do it?

We’d set up myriad illnesses with myriad ways to heal those illnesses, myriad approaches to living, thinking, and breathing, earning, eating, emoting, worshiping, creating, inventing, and then navigate our way through it all.

Some of us might get so frustrated with this whole system that we knew something was up. We might feel so bad about all of it that we tried this, tried that, approached this, approached that, sorted, experimented, read book after book, saw counselors and shrinks galore, and still found some of the same frustrations coming back at us again and again.

And what if those same frustrations and emotions were put in front of us for the express purpose that we dive into them — into the feeling of them — in order to see them for what they really were — and break free, once we discovered again and again, that they were simply ways to keep us from knowing our power and the amazing beings we really are? What if we created them for that reason?

Interesting to think about.

Just interesting.

I know y’all probably think I’ve gone way off my rocker now.

I look pretty much the same as I ever did. But I sure like finding new ways to think about the same-old, same-old stuff. I kinda get the feeling that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

But that’s me.