—I THINK I MAY HAVE BEEN THE MOON IN A PAST LIFE
THE THING ABOUT FEAR
It’s embarrassing to admit this, but when I was a child, more things frightened me than didn’t frighten me.
Some scared me a little. But others rattled me in a way that made my bones quake.
For instance, I flinched involuntarily if a limb was raised even remotely close to my direction. I’d literally jerk spasmodically.
For instance, I thought the big-eyed owl clock on my wall, with its pendulum swinging second-hand, was staring at me through the night, devising various methods of torture.
For instance, I thought adults were only created to torment young people, especially those with whom they shared DNA.
Scaredy-cat. Yep. That was me. You could have even called me cowardly.
I’m older now, but I sometimes still flinch if my son or daughter reaches over my shoulder to retrieve an item. (They’ll always ask why I do it, but I try to leave my dark past out of their hopeful present.)
I’ve read all kinds of articles about fear, and the genesis of it almost always emanates from two things—a lack of trust, or the unknown.
Is that person going to hurt me?
Can I trust this person/situation?
What in the hell is that thing squirming in the grass?
I’ve seen this movie before, and everyone gets slaughtered by the end.
I haven’t seen this movie before, but it looks frightening and there’s no way in hell I’m seeing it.
This isn’t to say that all fear is bad. On the contrary, sometimes its innate protectionism keeps us safe—you’re walking down a dark alley late at night, hear footsteps, and you run instead of loitering. Fear, like stress, has its positives. Eustress, for example, is stress that compels a person to perform when they otherwise might not. Its literal translation is “good stress.”
While the current spread of coronavirus prompted me to ponder the subject of fear, none of what I’m writing is specifically related to the crisis, nor am I suggesting anyone should feel differently than they do about it.
And no one, no one, should tell you how to feel—not a friend or a lover. Not a therapist or a pastor. They can maybe help you make some sense of your fear, but they can’t tell you not to feel fear, because it doesn’t work that way. They’re not you.
The one thing I will say about the present pandemic is that the media seem to be reveling in every bit of bad news they can get, fear-mongering and creating a casserole of hysteria that has reached an intensity I’ve never experienced in my lifetime. In a sense the paranoia is similar to the day of 9/11 and the days that followed it, especially for people getting back on an airplane for the first time since the attacks.
Fear, when magnified by outside, consenting voices, can give license to a paralyzing anxiety, reminiscent of what I sometimes experience when depression shackles my ankles and handcuffs my wrists. Where there’s a crippling dread of doing anything other than breathing. Where one is so stupefied that living life as it was meant to be lived—out in the open, with nature, with people—becomes the very last option.
In a way, this type of fear is similar to gossip. Tearing people down. Belittling them. Making others appear ugly and awful when they’re just human fucking beings.
There was a lot of fear in our world, even before the virus outbreak. And there will always be things that shake us in some form or another.
I just wonder what would happen if we kept our fears to ourselves. If we tried to solve our fears or find the root causes of them, because, after all, they’re our fears and our fears alone.
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” That Winston Churchill quote has almost become trite, but it was a good message for people during the second world war, and it’s good advice now.
There are a lot of things I’m still afraid of, mainly heights. I don’t think I’m ever going to get over that one, and maybe I’m not meant to. But I woke up this morning. I’m still alive. The sun is shining on the dappled lake surface. There are moments yet to be experienced and so much to be grateful for. Fear can go screw itself.
