About Fear

Today is the first day of the first full week of the new year according to the Gregorian calendar that is commonly used personally and professionally in my life. As a new year in 2014 has taken hold, so to has old habits that return showing that a new year doesn't keep life continuous in the patterns that have begun in moments passed. The new year had me thinking about fear, the emotion that makes it hard to accept any part of reality. With so many perspectives and biases, wounds and scars, histories, and other experiences woven into our interactions and our experiences, fear is easy to feel. 

The questions I asked myself what it would take to live my life fully, especially if I wanted it to be unique. I kept coming back to fear. It has been a persistent feeling that I've noticed to be quite a contagion no matter the severity of the circumstance. Fear of failure, inadequacy, the end of the world, open spaces, death, rejection, being loved, elevators, heights, snakes, the dark. I could go on with my list and risk sounding like I want to start one of those psychiatrist booths that Lucy van Pelt is always using to get Charlie Brown out of a nickel, but that's not what this is about. There is something about fear that provokes people to do things they wouldn't otherwise dream of doing. I don't think there is a way to keep fear out of our lives, but I do believe there are ways to be aware of it so it doesn't influence us in ways that risk us from living life fully. 

While I cannot speak for anyone's experiences but my own on this blog, I will share that thinking about the future with some consternation and apprehension can make the present moment more tense and less freeing. I prefer to be a bit of a free spirit with some conscious thought included in what I do, think, and say in order to gain different perspectives on what parts of life I may be thinking about.  If I read something in the news that had a decidedly grim outlook and I thought there may be hope, I would probably choose the side of hope. Now hope may feel a bit naive, and maybe it is premature to think that way without knowing all sides to a certain situation, but if I were to to take the time to do that, I would find so many different thoughts and experiences that both validate and negate my own that it would be hard to really know what to think after that. 

So I have taken some time to rest with uncertainty, to accept the paradoxes of life and death as part of this universe, this life, this world that I've been traveling along for 24 years. I can be afraid or I can let life be a wonder of delight and surprise that can both be superficial and of depth to making meaning, purpose, and goodness from the acts of kindness and laughter that appear in the midst of coping with the hardscrabble realities that pockmark our lives and help us direct our conscious efforts. To live without fear is to not be afraid, but to live without fear controlling our entire lives.  Happy New Year!