Fear is a Station
Common among each of us and possessed within is a route of stations, individual places where we have taken refuge, made decisions, and places that house the many moments which create our emotional lives. These places are primarily psychological lots, inner points where we have learned things like how to love and care for others, and also where we have recognized how anger and even rage are alive within us. There are thousands of these intersections that twist and coil within us that create the grounding for our emotional landscape of feeling and interaction. Its infrastructure is dense—sometimes smooth and sometimes coarse, unable to be easily scaled. Of these stations, some are familiar dwelling places where we think, consider, and where we are able to imagine; others are more like puzzles, where we barely understand the smallest piece of a greater picture.
There is one place in particular and certain within each of us that confronts us often, and our understanding of it is layered with complexity. As children we knew the dimension of this place the least, but with more experience and worldliness we came to recognize this station more and more. For some, it is small like a single gust of wind across an open shore, and for others it is a powerful gale— strong with a mighty force. This place is called fear.
Consider fear as something housed in a jar. In this jar there are two parts— something like water and something like an oil. The parts never mix but instead float and tumble into one another as they forever maintain separate consistencies, separate chemistries, and their own unique forms. One part of the mixture contains the skills we use to protect ourselves, accurately capable of dodging harm, danger, and threat. In this way, our fear provides safety and assurance. But what of the other part? When does fear stand in our own way; when is it unhelpful? An answer to a question like this is more subjective than can quickly be explained, but the simplest response— more courage means less fear.
One fallacy about courage is that it is something big and a gesture required to make an opposing army retreat or a cunning dragon recoil and disappear back into its ancient cave. Sure, in a high stakes, Goliath setting this is an expert example of courage, but many of us don’t contend with fear in overt or largely cinematographic ways. The messages reinforcing what we understand about overcoming fear are also very often extreme, permitting us to think that if we are not skydiving or handling a python then we are not adequately conquering fear. None of this is true. Courage has its place in moments that are small and unimpressive.
In my own life sometimes fear is bold, resembling the face of God and I am concerned whether or not He smiles upon a decision I have made or something I have said. My fear sometimes feels pragmatic: did I lock the door… is the oven still on… am I saving enough money? Fear for me can even be completely irrational, based on nothing where fact or evidence can support its presence. Instead it’s an unbridled spiraling of thought, worry, and confusion. And from time to time, I can admit that fear awakens my inner child, asking, “what’s that beneath my bed and who’s that lurking there within the shadow of my closet door?” I have a healthy, active mix of fear operating within my daily adult life. However, lately fear has given me cause for new rumination…
Tussling with the context of society’s modern day, the most terrifying fear I grapple with is a world unchanged by recent events and a people unlearned. Those who have survived the vortex of loss and are resurfacing to celebrate their triumphant win over long bouts of isolation and doubt… I meditate, who are they now? I don’t suspect a grand or seismic transmogrification for many of us, and yes our patience and diligence deserves reward. But, I fear that somewhere within us, along the route of our private, inner stations— even the smallest lessons unearthed along the course have already collected dust. This isn’t conjecture and instead I write from firsthand accounts, firsthand conversations, and even firsthand conflicts. Considering everything that has happened to everything we know, I am eager to ask but fearful to discover… have enough of us learned to do what is right, especially for one another?
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[Photo: @jimmyp9751]
