Fear is inevitable in our lives. I mean, gravity fools us and lulls us into a false sense of security but cosmically, we are sitting on top of a rock spinning super fast around the sun, and the sun is in turn spinning super fast around the Milky Way galaxy, and the Milky Way galaxy is spinning super fast around the whole universe. To us it appears really slow, but in realty the distance that is covered and the time in which it occurs, it is super fast.
This doesn’t account for all the debris that is floating around everywhere from all those exploded suns that is no more, all those unformed planets, and it is all trying to enter our atmosphere to do what it passionlessly wants to do. So, it’s no wonder that on every level of our life, on a cosmic level, and a micro level, we fear, and we fear for a reason.
But that’s just it. Fear is not the enemy in our life. We have minimized and unfairly heaped all of our insecurities upon it. We do everything we can, healthy and unhealthy to mitigate it. We defer to running or hiding from it, but I think we have fear all wrong.
Fear serves a purpose. A very important purpose for our lives. On the one hand it warns us of dangers we need to take seriously. On the other hand, if those dangers prove false, it presents us with opportunity.
That’s it. What a lot of us miss. What I have missed for all those years running and hiding from fear, is that where there is fear, there are dreams on the other side, if we find the courage to leap and swim there.
Fear is an indicator that you’re onto something. Fear is an indicator that something you really care about could possibly come true. We fear for a reason. We fear death and we fear failure, but not because our minds want us to suffer, but the exact opposite. Fear is such an intense emotion, so that we spar with it, and truly appreciate and go after the things that really matter in life.
Running or hiding is not a good response when we feel fear. If you run, you might live for another day, but that fear will get stronger, and it will never stop chasing you. If you hide, like I have, you get to live for another day also, but what kind of a day is it? How terrible it is to waste our talents and the time we have to truly live, simply because we fear something that has not happened.
And we don’t fear great disasters, we fear embarrassment, we fear how we are going to look or feel. We fear things that always fade deep into peoples memories. We fear things that no one will remember, and we sacrifice our happiness and meaning in our lives in order to do it.
The next time you experience fear will be intense. I will always be intense. That is the function of fear. To scare the shit out of you so that you can ask the important questions, but when those emotions subside, what are you going to do?
Are you going to run and hide? Run and hide like you’ve always done, and run and hide like so many people are apt to do. Or knowing what you now know, are you going to ask what’s on the other side? Ask about the possibilities of being and getting something that would be so lovely to behold and be?
Don’t run and hide from fear. Spar with it. Your life will be so much richer for it.
Do the things that scare you, but not the things that will kill you.
Cover photo generously provided by photographer Mark Basarab.
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