Day 1: The Fear

I wrote this post last night and this morning, but this afternoon I decided to turn over my Conscious Discipline calendar to October 20th. These words were on the card:

"Fear judges, love enjoys."

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Most of what we do on a moment to moment basis may be because of fear: Fear of what other people think of us; Fear of not accomplishing something we said years ago we were going to do; Fear of being alone; Fear of eating the wrong foods or not exercising enough; Fear of not watching that new show that everyone is talking about; Fear of living; Fear of dying; Fear of all the people around us fading from our lives; Fear of the entire world collapsing and feeling helpless to do anything about it; Fear of spiders; et cetera.

Fear is such a strong force of life that it creates more life. It is how we and all other conscious beings have survived. We don't want to die and we don't want all the other people to die too. The same goes for other creatures. We are all striving to survive and fear, sometimes, is a helpful tool. Though, I believe in this modern world, without natural predators, it is overused to the point of disease.

I have heard about surveys in which the participants were more fearful of being on stage in front of a group of people than dying.

It is amazing how many of us fear what other people think of us. We are so afraid to be ourselves in front of people that we stay at home with the blinds closed. I think this social fear begins developing when we are young, when we are surrounded by our cruel colleagues: children. Children and teenagers are naturally judgemental of those around them. And throughout childhood, we are jockeying for any position. We gravitate to those that are like us and we push away from others that are either unkind or different. A child will hang out with kids that make poor decisions just because they are accepting. That isn’t a phenomenon that we naturally grow out of. Childhood is a training ground for adulthood.

As a teacher, I now notice the same social habits in adults. Most are much nicer now, but we still worry about what our peers think of us because we are worried about being pushed away. Adults still gravitate towards like-minded social groups. Adults still make mistakes. They make a lot of them. Adults are still mean, though we hide it much better.

Again, we do not naturally grow out of our anger, jealousy, resentment, and all the other negative qualities we learn from our parents and peers when we are children. We have to choose to be better. We have to choose to be kind. We have to monitor our emotions and make sure they do not control us. Through all the shit in the world and the hardships of our lives, we have to wake up every day and decide that we are going to be the best person we can be. That is not an easy decision. That is a battle that we are choosing to fight every day. And somedays we don't show up for the fight.

Eventually though, I believe that battle will cease being a ‘battle’ and it will just be called life. It will be what we do because the world needs people that want to be better.

We do not need more people that have the ability to point out everything that is wrong with other people with a meme on Facebook or Twitter. We do not need people that argue about things they cannot control. We do not need people that say, “I can fix him” or “I can fix her” while all their own shit is bottled up inside, and the need to fix other people is our inside projecting onto others.

We need people that want to fix themselves because they are the only ones who can. It sounds selfish, but if we all did our part to work on ourselves, maybe some of that overwhelming fear wouldn’t encompass our lives so much. Maybe we could wake up every day and face one fear, and be a little bit stronger and a little bit kinder. I am not saying go out and pick up a spider with your bare hand and let it sit on your nose; I am saying maybe the next time you encounter the spider you leave it alone and don’t try to kill it. Don't the fear control the actions. The same goes for all those spiders that crawl around in our chest. Face them. Acknowledge them. And move on with our day.

It is okay to be afraid. I am. Half the time when I am writing I want to shout at myself to get off the fucking soapbox and finish that novel you told everyone about and never finished. I'm afraid of calling myself a writer and not publishing a damn thing. No matter how confident I appear, there is still that feeling in my stomach that worries about what other people are thinking. I am afraid of what you are thinking, dear reader. And I am writing these words with the dripping sweat of fear that this all sounds preachy and self-absorbing. Maybe it does.

But none of that fears matters right now because I am doing this no matter what. I am going in headfirst the only way I know how and seeing what happens on the other side.

I going to face this fear of an audience. I am going to be myself and improve myself every day. And I hope others will do the same.

The one thing I have learned in life is that it is more important to enjoy the journey than suffer to a happy ending that my never come.

"Fear judges, love enjoys."

Cheers.

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Author’s Note #1: No animals were harmed in the creation of this blog.

Author’s Note #2: I hate the word ‘blog’.