Fear

~9-minute read on your own or along with me via the recording at the beginning of my website blog.  

Fear, like the Predator, will always be there. There is no point in trying to find a place where it cannot reach me. It is my birthright as a being with a body to fear what threatens it – illness, exposure, isolation, hunger, and in this day and age – money. Even the very wealthy, I have heard, never feel they have enough of it to secure their livelihood or reputation. We are taught to see money as security, and yet it never delivers on that promise. We know now, more clearly than ever, with COVID lay-offs and confusion in the unemployment system, how even if we achieve “enough” it can be taken away at any moment.

I am not making enough to sustain my current lifestyle. And my current lifestyle is not one I have been wanting to live for more time than I like to admit. There are many reasons I have stayed – my health, my benefits, my belief that I am learning something valuable, my attachment to my routine, and this little patch of land, my hope that something will shift. But the real reason under it all is fear. I am afraid I won’t find something better. I am afraid of the paralysis I know can come from too much of the unknown. I am afraid my health will take a nose-dive and I won’t be able to recover. And beyond all these thoughts is this sensation of a heavy menacing blackness, something I have felt since childhood, lying in wait as the world “out there”.

I am learning to look to the wild when my human faculties fail. The antelope do not live in fear of the lioness. They sense when it is near and they respond with their instincts to bolt at what they have learned is the slightest whiff of danger. The lizard freezes when the weasel approaches, blending into the stones it rests upon. The squid releases a cloud of ink, the moth flashes the eyespots on its wings, the nest of hatchlings cry out for rescue. Survival gets much more nuanced in social animals. Belonging to the group and navigating the hierarchy become essential skills. It is better to let the alpha mate and eat well than to face a beating or exile. They learn to appease. They get devious.

What does the wild in me do under threat? Is it effective at keeping me safe? And how, if I realize I need to learn new strategies, do I find the courage to face what feels like the certainty of death? How do I reconnect with my ability to sniff out the real threat, and trust my instincts to respond in my own best interest?

As a child, I was very rarely given what I asked for and I was punished often enough by adults and peers for expressing myself that I learned to manipulate to get what I want. I learned how to be charming, to sneak what I believed was my fair share, and how to focus my energies on taking care of myself. It’s exhausting, it’s alienating, and as I’ve gotten to know more people, I’ve realized it’s really, really common. So many people want community, they want to live in harmony with nature, they want to set aside competition and scarcity, but they cannot achieve it because the old way of being is so deeply engrained that they have, in essence, become a threat to the very way of life they want to embrace.

I am one of those people, so it makes sense that I fear facing the world. It is a hostile, demanding, and unforgiving place when I have competition and unworthiness in my bones. And I am right to fear myself. Because out on the road alone, or even if welcomed, I still have to contend with my inner critic and my stubborn rebel.

What about the wild can give me hope and courage?  That stubborn rebel is a buffalo in my body who knows how to face into a driving snowstorm and plow onward. That inner critic is a hawk on my shoulders with piercing insight and the capacity to shred a threat. That charm is a downy soft bunny in my heart who can bring warmth and tenderness to times of overwhelm and regret. And that cheater is the mischievous coyote in my gut who brings creativity and playfulness to moments that feel impenetrable and insurmountable.

If I am focused on surviving as best I can, I can miss the entire purpose of my life: filling my ecological niche. What I am here on this earth to do is what sets the life force flowing through me. Living in service of this does not guarantee success or survival. It doesn’t necessarily translate into a paycheck, social recognition, or finding community. But it does anchor me into a vast network of information and nutrients under the ground and throughout my body, which sustains my body and can also nourish my heart and mind if I am open to it as all other things inevitably fall away.

When I feel that Predator lurking, even if only in the jungle of my mind, it is a reminder for me to ask: What is really at risk here? Am I at risk of starving to death without a paycheck, so I freeze, hunker down, keep quiet, follow the rules? Or am I at risk of losing my purpose, my joy, my vitality, so I stand up, speak out, walk away? The answer is rarely clear-cut. And there is no shame in playing safe. Familiarity brings with it the illusion of security, and sometimes we need time to get clear and get resourced. But I also need to be careful not to numb out and forget what I know.

What I do with what I know has suddenly become far less about what I believe is possible and what I feel able to achieve, and more about my relationship with fear as it lives in my body, and as it lives as an entity always there on my shoulder. Do I want to base my life on my relationship with fear? Or on my relationship to what I love and what I want to build?

In this moment, the best survival strategy the wild animal in me has is art. Art is expression. It is play. It is truth. It is beauty. It affirms life when everything is crumbling.

When you feel paralyzed, overwhelmed, hopeless – what happens when you welcome the experience of your body? What words, images, and sensations arise? How can you use art – movement, writing, visualization, color, sound – to give voice to them, to bring them closer to you? This lets the wild speak to you more clearly and intimately. It may be difficult to hear, but it is always true. And if you act on what you know, the wild will be your constant companion, trotting alongside you to hell and back. Because what the earth needs more than anything is for us to live the life we’ve been given.

Nancy

Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.
Don’t try to see through the distances.
That’s not for human beings.
Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.

~ Rumi