They may even put off the final decision, dreading the conversations that it will entail.
"At the back of my head there is always a creeping sense of dread that the computer will stop working or that it will be the day that the robots decided to start the revolution and their first act will be to not put my jokes up," he said.
When that happens cannot be predicted, but it is a matter of metaphysical certainty that it will, and when that dreaded day occurs, it will be beyond the capacity of Washington's policymakers, including the Federal Reserve, to conjure up a solution devoid of pain.
The unfocused dread that Jennifer feels will linger to the end.
Valdano knows that oratory is no antidote to the dread that will come if Barcelona is still in the Champions League on May 22, when the 2010 final is played at the Bernab?
Kim Newman, the doyen of horror film criticism, described it this month as "one of the strongest, most effective horror films of recent years" which "imparts a lingering sense of dread that will stay with you for days".
But beyond the immediate celebration there is an underlying dread that many inmates will not have lived to see freedom.
The pain dealt out in Aurora is infinitely more important than the fate of one movie; despite that, however, one can only guess at the dread that will currently beset Warner Brothers and everyone connected with the film, starting with its director, Christopher Nolan.
But as the economy slides and the country sheds jobs, there is a palpable dread that street crime will get worse as well, economists here say.
THEY are some foe of ancestral dread that will subjugate, confine and torture the most dear of our aspirations, liberty.
