Flap Metaphor

The news is in: there is a flap to prevent vermin from coming up into your toilet. But you have to install it yourself.

...And it strikes me that this is a powerful metaphor for our modern lives: how much anxiety we live with during our most vulnerable moments, and how we push that fear away in order to function. So we tell ourselves that we're protected by any number of devices - from government to God - which may or may not exist. (Or which may exist but be unavailable or in-operational when we need them.) We choose to believe in these mythical "flaps" that are supposed to keep the "vermin" out, in order to leave the house or even use the toilet. Because if we really stop and think about what does happen every day it doesn't matter what the probability is that it will happen to us. In fact, I don't even have to leave the house in order to have a statistical probability of getting dead - as my daughter puts it. So I pray (and take medication) to help me believe the illusion that everything will probably be alright today.

Here's the good news: there is a "flap" that you can install yourself to protect you from unwanted rodent and reptilian visitations. You have to take off your toilet and install it in the hole in your floor. And you'll never guess: it's a tube with a flap in it that only flaps one way!!
Now I shall strive to make the metaphor complete by tying in the do-it-yourself protection plan for your life beyond the john:

As I see it, there are two options:
1. Physical defense - eg/ carrying a firearm, learning to fight really really well, being able to run very fast, always having a getaway car at the ready, hiring a body guard, living in a rubber walled bomb shelter stocked with lead free canned food and a fresh water supply.

2. Spiritual or Psychological defense (known by some as the delusional defense)- eg/ separating your mind and body so that nothing that hurts or kills you can really hurt or kill the essential you, and studying the original Star Wars Trilogy in order to truly understand what it means to become stonger than they can possibly imagine if they do kill you and possibly learning how to disappear before the light saber hits you.


...It is at this point that you need to ask yourself if you have the necessary time, energy, and inclination to install a flap guard against, well, LIFE. That's completely up to you.