Impending Doom
The game begins when we are tossed into the river of life. Unable to swim on our own, we begin totally reliant on others. These guardians provide the raft, and help structure our experience. The rafts vary in their capability to match the demands of the river. Some can move to smoother waters, while others never stray far from peril. Every alternative shapes our experience, pleasure and pain directing our path as we seek more of one and less of the other. Pain echoes the roar of what inextricably draws the river’s current. Is it perilous or is it benign? That roar, which reminds us that life on the river is fragile, is an existential given in our lives, and in all the life that has gone before us — impending doom.
The word impending has its origin in the Latin word “impendēre” which means to hang over, to be imminent. Doom has several contemporary meanings, including unavoidable bad fortune, ruin or death, an unfavorable judgment, decision or sentence.
Yet, the etymology of doom is from an Anglo-Saxon word, “dom,” that means judgment or law. As an aside, it turns out, my 35th great-grandfather, King Alfred The Great (848–901 C.E.), compiled a dom-boc (doom book or law code) which attempted to blend the Mosaic code with Christian principles and three pre-existing Saxon codes. Winston Churchill credited the Laws of Alfred, which were continually amplified by his successors, as the basis for what grew into that body of common law, which has guided and constrained much of the world.
Games are built around rules, and the game of life is no exception. Rules of all sorts hang over us in life. Human laws, natural laws, and a myriad of rules connected to our personal and commercial interactions in the world, foremost are those we feel from within. Like King Alfred, we each create a personal dom-boc. This “creation” is an implicit process, generally happening outside our awareness, and built upon a foundation developed in our earliest years of childhood. Emotional interaction with our dom-boc is a fundamental activity of our minds. We live in fear of breaking the rules, being found out, judged, sentenced…doomed, whether by God, nature, or our fellow human — no wonder fear, anxiety, and worry play such a central role in living. While commonalities abound, we each have a unique dom-boc. We each construe the rules of the game and feel something slightly different hanging over us. While we tend to judge others based on our personal rules, since no one plays the same game or has the same rule book, we should consider caution in these evaluations.
There are many ways to play this game, so each of us faces our own version of impending doom. Each mind, to one degree or another, scans for what is deemed a meaningful threat, danger, or judgment — our flavor of impending doom. Impending doom is an inner experience, its meaning and consequences are constructed by the mind, and this perception frames our experience and sets limits on our actions and even our thoughts. We cannot cheat the game, but not all the rules are as rigid as we might suppose. Sometimes it makes sense to question authority, especially when that authority commands from our subconscious. Paying attention to the rules that guide our lives can be very revealing. When we shift our rules, the game changes. We each have to play our own game, which involves determining our purpose, our set of rules, and managing our experience of impending doom. How that balance is achieved, is the essence of the game.
“I am willing to take life as a game of chess in which the first rules are not open to discussion. No one asks why the knight is allowed his eccentric hop, why the castle may only go straight and the bishop obliquely. These things are to be accepted, and with these rules the game must be played: it is foolish to complain of them.”
― W. Somerset Maugham
John R. Lucy, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice at Decatur Psychology, LLC.
