The fear of fear

Every now and then you read a sentence of such devastating simplicity it just rocks you back on your heels. You know, the old lightbulb exploding trick.

Chapomatic quotes Jason from Just Another Soldier and his (emailed) article on the Tao of Soldiering. I'd read Jason once before, but forgotten him. So glad I went back and read it. Thanks to Chap for the tip.
Jason talks about war, and fear, and what suffering means from a soldier's viewpoint. He talks simply, and eloquently, and he gets his feelings across in a very readable fashion. This para in particular struck me:

It is not necessary for the novitiate to buy into any of this. But when he’s into the twelfth mile of a forced road march carrying nearly his own body weight in gear, he learns that there is a landscape of pain he never knew existed. Once you’ve learned that there is no real limit to what you can endure, you’re on your way to understanding that you can do just about anything so long as you allow yourself to have the will to do it.

That's the trick, isn't it. Allowing yourself the will to do it. So many things we think we can do, but at the last hurdle, we fail to muster up the will to try. What defeats us is not our capabilities, but our willpower.

I know this is not revelatory. It's basic life stuff. But sometimes you surround yourself with complications, things that make decisions seem more difficult and complex than they really are. It's another way of procrastinating so you stay in that safe zone where things can't go wrong because you don't allow them the chance to.

I have fears, like everyone else. Some are trivial, some are the sort that suck the breath out of you so you can't function. Some I'll never get to experience, like the fears that come from being in combat. I know my fears don't compare with the terrors that many people face in their lives, but they are no less real or less debilitating to me.

I'm terrified of spiders. I can't be in a room with them. I can't look at pictures or movies. I couldn't watch Shelob do her stuff, so Sam's brave stance passed me by on the screen (I knew what was coming because Tolkien did a pretty good job on my imagination anyway.) I would love to overcome this, as it can be a bit of a handicap when alone in the house with a big hairy arachnid and only the oven cleaner to use against it. I usually let off a spray of the stuff and then drop the can and run screaming. One day I would really like to desensitise myself, with professional help. But the thought of it is overwhelmingly, paralysingly frightening. I've put it off and put it off. I've said to myself it can't be done, and it's much easier to just concede defeat than go through what I imagine will be a horrible, nightmarish process.

And then I read stories like Jason's and I think, well, I don't know a thing about fear, and I feel stupid and more than a little inadequate.

My other great fear was heights. I couldn't go up ladders more than six feet. I couldn't look out of a hotel window at the ground, it made me sick and dizzy. Funnily enough, I could look out of helicopters and planes, because they weren't connected to the ground. I could winch down even. But up a fire escape - no way.

I said 'was' because three years ago I suddenly got over it. I went to Toronto for a holiday, and we drove to Niagara and went up the CN tower. The one that has the glass floor where you look 1500 feet down to the tiny tour coaches below. To this day I'm not sure what made me do it, but suddenly I so badly wanted to get over this fear, I just got into the elevator and went up there. It took me half an hour to put my foot on the glass floor, but I did. Inch by inch. I stood there for about ten minutes and then I looked down.

And it was like facing your worst nightmare, and seeing it evaporate right in front of you. The fear just vanished. It was like it had never been. Talk about exhilaration. The adrenalin I got from the moment was so high I was literally bouncing round the observation deck for the next hour. I wanted to find every tower and climb it right then and there. The world was suddenly, stunningly beautiful. It was amazing.

My fear of heights is a thing of the past, but others remain and new ones crop up. Silly fears, ones that seem so trivial I've written them down and then cut them out because they sound so stupid (fear of appearing ridiculous for one!)

Fear of fear itself. Hard to admit, but harder still to do something about it. Taking that spider-desensitizing program will be harder than many other things I've had to do, because for one thing, it's all about me. There is no external motivation. No one else benefits from it. I'm not saving lives. I don't have to do it. It's totally about my own willpower, which is why it's been so easy to put off for so long.

Reading this through, it sounds self-indulgent, and it probably is, and in a way, I guess many fears are about self-indulgence, and as Jason points out, egotism. But it was an exercise I wanted to complete, regardless of how it reads.

I was reminded of another great sentence in the movie The Hours, when Virginia Woolf says to her husband: "You can't have peace by avoiding life."

Such a simple thought, but it encapsulates everything of what living is about. The trick is to summon the willpower to do it.

Developing.

Comments

[chap]

Great observation! (and thanks for the trackback--I wish Jason could get the credit!)