Fear IV

Sarah says:

"Our fears are private, and if we choose to reveal them to someone, we feel exposed and raw. Regardless, though, of whether or not we let anyone into our inner sanctum of flawed psyche, we alone are responsible for overcoming. We alone fight the battles, and we alone congratulate ourselves when we win one.

Possibly, for me, it's the alone part that scares me the most."

I'm not sure why (I do recognize a kernel of truth here), but I disagree with this. Or rather, I think this approach, this solo romp through the abrading, dark and lonely wilderness, is exactly wrong.

Loneliness. Darkness. The unkown. These are the tall pillars of the Temple of Fear.

And the only way to dispel them and vanquish fear is to drag your fears into the light of day, share them with other people, solicit input. Name the beast and steal its power. That sort of thing.

It's all very Dungeons and Dragons, innit?

Truthfully, I can tell you that every fear I've named, that I've discussed with another person, has lost its spell on me. Every. Single. One.

Because, I believe, we all have more or less the same fears. It's clinging to exceptionalism that keeps us in that solipsistic nightmare. Once you concede that neither you nor your fears are special, they recede into the distance. Once you ask other people how they dealt with those same fears, you gain the perspective you need to move on. This is the stuff of support groups and advice columns and close confidantes and trusted siblings or parents or spouses. This is what it is to be alive and participating.

A long time ago I heard the Churchill line, "All we have to fear is fear itself," and I thought, "Well, what the fuck does that mean?" Now, I see it so clearly. Fear itself is the thing making the darkness so dark. Fear itself is what keeps us lonely and isolated.

I won't pretend to have conquered all my fears. Half the time I'm only dimly aware that I'm afraid of something. The clearest clue I get in adulthood is anger. If something is making me angry, there's an extremely good chance that I'm simply afraid of it.

And once I've identified, I think I'm duty-bound to walk through the fear and move on. Eleanor Roosevelt said, "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."

I'll leave off now, while I'm still buying my own line on this one.