Facing fear

Alright, I promised a post on facing fear, so here it goes.

The way I see it, there are two basic responses to fear: either you avoid it, or you confront it. I would estimate (and I frankly admit this to be a Dan-fact) that roughly 99% of the time we deploy the former. I think we would be much better off employing the latter.

Our fears are with us every day, shadowing us wherever we go. They even invade our sleep. Yet, given their constant companionship, it is interesting to consider how poorly understood our fears are. Most are buried deep within our soul, and manifest themselves unconsciously. Even when they surface – as they sometimes do – we rarely think about them, much less expose them to prolonged scrutiny. Instead, we prefer to ignore them, retreating from situations where we may have to face them, and thus avoid the need to probe deeper into unknown territory.

Avoiding one’s fears is understandable. I personally can think of almost nothing in the whole world I dislike more than confronting my fears. Yet precisely for that reason it is essential that we do it – and regularly.

Why? Lots of reasons. Fears grow when you ignore them. They fester, and demand attention. I’m reminded of Noface, the rather scary character from Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, who when appeased only grows larger, angrier, and more insistent. Only when the protagonist – a little girl with enormous courage – quietly yet resolutely confronted Noface and told him “no,” did he begin to shrink down to his appropriate size and become innocuous.

Perhaps the most important reason we must face our fears is that they rob us of our agency. By ‘agency’ I mean the freedom to make choices, but also the power to determine our future – including the person we want to be and the life we want to lead. If left unchecked and unconfronted, fear will start to make our choices for us. By resorting to default and avoiding our fears, we limit the scope and range of our activities. If we’re not careful, we may look back and see that our entire life experience was colored and framed, not by agency (our conscious selections and choices), but by fear. That’s a chilling prospect.

 And the worst of it is that fear often operates below the radar of our conscious minds. Because our fears become engrained deeply in our psyche, they can limit our choices (or the way in which we interpret them) without our even realizing it. Indeed, fear is a stealthy, dangerous, and poorly-understood foe.

The solution is not a pleasant one, but it is simple: confront it head-on. The rest of this post is a cursory explanation of how exactly to do that. First, though, a huge disclaimer. I hate confronting my fears, as I said earlier. And I’m not very good at it either. So take what follows with a few (hundred thousand) grains of salt. If any of it is useful to you, I’ll consider this post a success.

The way I see it, facing your fears involve three crucial steps:

1.     Acknowledge

2.     Explore

3.     Let go

I personally hate step-by-step processes, and I like numbered lists even less. But I didn’t want any of these three parts to go unnoticed, so I gave in and listed them like that.

The first part, of course, is admitting you are afraid. We spend far too much time telling ourselves we’re fine, that we’re not afraid. Far from changing anything for the better, this just gives our fears even more leeway to run our lives. But acknowledging that we’re afraid isn’t enough. The crucial moment is when we say out loud exactly what it is we’re afraid of. Making a precise, verbal declaration of our fear is crucial.

Have you ever been wondering something, or looking for something, or stuck on a problem, and you’ve been going in circles inside your head for the longest time – then you finally find someone and ask your question out loud, and by the time you’ve finished saying it you know the answer? It happens all the time to me, and I think there’s a powerful principle at work. Until you’re ready to ask a question, you’re not ready to hear the answer; asking a question prepares your mind for the answer.

By the same token, declaring your fears prepares you to face them. You’re not ready to face them until you’re and willing to name them. In my experience, naming my fears leaves me feeling like I’ve already come halfway to facing them.

Second, is to explore. It’s like taking a flashlight with you and exploring an old, dark storage shed that no one’s been in for years. Evil things grow in the dark, and the quickest way to destroying and uprooting them is to shine light on them. Exploring your fears, however, is dangerous, risky, and scary. You never know what you might find in a dark, cobweb covered corner. What you find might influence the way you see yourself. In fact, I’ve often felt like this stage is akin to looking at yourself hard in a mirror after a long time without seeing your reflection.

The odd truth is that we can’t see ourselves very easily. Others can see us all the time, but we can only get a good look at ourselves by using a mirror. Facing your fears is one way of holding up a mirror to yourself – and you may not like what you see.

Two final comments on this stage of facing fear. First, really explore! It’s not enough to look for the obvious, surface level culprits – you have to really dig down to discover the tap roots of your fears. And they may surprise you. You may find out that you’re not really afraid of what you thought you were; that you’re afraid of something far more essential, something that cuts far closer to the bone – or the heart, as the case may be.

Second, while it’s important to explore thoroughly and carefully, it’s equally important to know when to leave the dark room and return to the daylight. Don’t stay too long in the dark trying to make sense of dusty old junk. In the process of exploration, you may become hung up on questions of “why?” The truth is we may never know in this life the answer to the deepest, most troubling “why?” questions. But it’s equally true that, in the end, they don’t matter nearly as much as the “what?” questions. In other words, asking why we are the way we are is not as important as asking what we should do about it, now that we know what we know.

Finally, you have to let go. What do I mean by this? Fear and hope grow together, remember? But feeling fear is one thing, and facing it is another. We begin to feel afraid when we can’t bear to contemplate a future where our hopes don’t come true – or where our fears do. Facing fear and letting go means being willing to accept a future where everything goes wrong.

I’m not saying you give up on our hopes. Rather, stop insisting on them. You have to be ok with a future that doesn’t realize them all. You have to be able to look your fear square in the eyes and say, “do your worst. I’ll be ok no matter what.” And no matter what happens, you face it calmly, with patience and grace.

The whole process is summarized in a short sequence near the end of the greatest animated series of all time, Cowboy Bebop. The main character, Spike, is on the verge of a very dangerous confrontation, and seeks advice and wisdom from his venerable native American friend, chief Red Bull. Spike is clearly afraid he might not come back, but chief Old Bull – rather than reassure him that he will survive, gives him this advice: “Do not fear death. It is always at our side. When we show fear, it jumps at us faster than light. But, if we do not show fear, it looks upon us gently and guides us into infinity.”

I’ve thought about that a great deal, but try as I might I can’t seem to say it any better, or clearer, than Old Bull.

Sorrow, suffering, embarrassment, hurt, disappointment, death – they are all just an arms length away. We live our lives in their shadow. But we need not be afraid, though fear is always there.

If we fear them, and consequently spend our lives trying to avoid them, not only will we fail to escape their influence, but we will find to our chagrin that we have, in the process, lost the chance to truly live.

Live deliberately. And let what happens, happen. If you do not show fear, the storms may rage but you will not be moved. And in the end you will see that it was the storm itself that made you who you are, and taught you to hope and have joy; and finally, it will guide you into infinity.

Sorry for waxing poetic there at the end, but Old Bull’s words to Spike really have the ring of truth to them. I hope we can learn to face our fears, that we may live deliberately, the way we always hoped we would.