Our fears are often misguided

Easter makes me think of eggs, of course, and how my dad avoided them like the plague. He feared having a high cholesterol level. Recent studies have debunked many of the previous reported links between egg consumption and high cholesterol, but when I was growing up in the 1970s-1980s, it was a big health focus.

As I got a little bit older and a tiny bit wiser, I thought it was strange that my dad would worry so much about eating one measly egg but smoked a pack or more of cigarettes each day. Surely the coffin nails would kill him via lung cancer before he developed heart disease.

We were both wrong. Despite the decades of smoking and the decades of egg aversion, Alzheimer’s claimed my dad’s life.

It made me think about how often our fears are misguided. We worry about x, when it’s really y that’s getting ready to do harm.

Fear is a valuable self-preservation tool, but it can also hold us back from our potential.

With both dementia and cancer prevalent in my family, I do think about what I eat and other lifestyle choices probably more than the average person.

But I also know I could get hit by a bus on my way to work.

There’s a balance there somewhere, everything in moderation, as the saying goes.

At least I’m going to enjoy my eggs.