on fear and why it should not be trusted

(a few people have pointed out to me that its been one year since i started vlogging. today is actually one year to the day. Family Day in Canada. Funnily enough this blog/vlog would not have happened if i hadn’t taken the conscious decision to move out of the way of my own fear. or rather to do it despite my fear. a year later i see where i could have done even more if i had really mastered not being scared, but i am happy with where i am, especially as compared to where i could be. I’ve been thinking about fear recently, for a number of reasons. below is what i’ve come to, thus far… thank you to everyone who has come on this journey with me, and who has encouraged me along the way. i am forever in your debt)

fear itself is useless. what is behind the fear, however, or disguised within it may provide some of the answers you seek, or answers you didn’t know you were looking for. very often what is buried in fear is ‘i don’t think i can do this’ or ‘i don’t want to do this’ or ‘what if i fail’. fear also often hides comparisons, unfavourable comparisons ‘i think so and so would be better…i’m certain they are’ or better yet fear sometimes hides confusion, not knowing where to start. sometimes fear is fear….very often fear of the unknown, fear of something new…but even these are not simply fear…it is the feeling of not knowing what to expect and how to plan for it that is motivating the fear.

Fear can sound like all these things but when you wake up in the morning you won’t hear them, what you will hear is ‘i am afraid’ and then you will go to your crutch. the thing you do to deal with the fear, not to evade it, but to rest comfortably with it. Admit it or not we often hug up our own fear rather than dispelling it, because keeping our fear close keeps us in comfort, we never have to step out. we stay. so we procrastinate, allow opportunities to pass us by. so we grow cross or depressed and push away people who could help us beat the fear. so we grow silent, never voicing the truth about the fear. never opening the sac in which the fear lives, exposing the content to the cleansing light. we let it fester. and very often after, we complain that nothing goes our way, no opportunities come to us. life hard. but we say it in a different voice that we usually do, because even we know there is more we could have done. we know we blocked ourselves.

so what now? you have an inkling that what is beating in your head and making you malice your bed is not just fear….what now? now you have to sit with yourself and figure out what it really is. this may be the scariest part of all because inside your own mind there are no roads, just paths, overrun by brush and full of rocks and you might head in there to find one thing and stumble upon or over another. upending yourself and landing face down in something you’ve been avoiding for years. and maybe several other fears. but the only way to figure if that siren in your mind is you not knowing where to start or a sign that this really isn’t the opportunity for you is to go in there, make a quiet space in your own mind and talk to yourself. talk to people around you, elders, people who think just like you, people who think nothing like you. but talk to yourself also. none of them know your specific situation like you do. none of them. you have to go into your mind in search of your own truth if you want to learn to keep walking with and through your fear. and i say with and through because there’s no guarantee that you will be able to dispel it completely. sometimes those bats flapping around in your head keep flapping. and the butterflies play percussion below. but the point is you have to move. through the fear. and the first step is finding out what else is in there mogglin’ as fear.

life is full of dreams and decisions and choices and opportunities and challenges. and all of those, including the opportunities, have the potential to bring up fear. my crutch is procrastination. i waste time until the opportunities fly by, and then i never have to find out if i would have failed or succeeded at whatever was placed before me. even blessings can bring up fear. it doesn’t mean you’re ungrateful. it just means you haven’t spoken to yourself long enough to have a plan. fear itself is useless. but the things that hide behind it are often the sign posts that lead us to new parts of ourselves or away from parts that we no longer have any need for. listen carefully to yourself. do not take your fear at face value. know what you can gain from it, but do not trust it on sight. keep moving.