Gripping Fear
I've started to wonder regularly about how much fear is a part of the decisions that I make. And what an odd emotion it is, fear.
I wonder at how much time we all spend doing things we don't really want to because, deep down, we are afraid. In times like this I usually come up with an alternate explanation for myself: I'm Being Responsible or I'm Really Needed or That's How Life Is or My Fear Is A Safety Mechanism For My Benefit.
The news plays up our fear, but with the safety and comfort of a "B" horror flick. Illustrations flash with "potential" casualties of a Pakistani nuclear strike in India. Replays are shown, over and over, of floods washing away houses when it's raining particularly hard somewhere. And the bogeyman himself in a star appearance from time to time, Osama Bin Laden.
But it's not that conspiracy theory fear thing for me, this isn't as much about politics as it is fear in every day life. It's the fear that stopped me from writing book reviews on this blog (I read Middlemarch and hit a wall) - the fear that I might sound stupid, or that I'm being redundant. It's the fear that paralyzes me when I know I need to update phoDak and look at other people's work. It's the fear I've used as an excuse to decline my personal dreams. It's the fear that has kept me doing jobs that I hated.
Sometimes I think we're afraid not to have fear because fear, unlike other emotions, is something that we can cloak ourselves in and experience every minute of the day.
As I am thinking about it - just in the sense of being aware, an examination of my life becomes a very telling picture. Not in the sense of a fear ruling my life, but as a telling picture like the box score of an old baseball game.
For me it is time to look at my fears straight in the eye: fear of incompetence, fear of unconventionality, fear of money, fear of failure, fear of lack of structure, and fear of other's perceptions. I have to march to the sound of the mashup in my head, and I can't do it with fear.
11:34:08 AM 
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