Fear is a friend who's misunderstood
-John Mayer
I'd put pain in that boat of misunderstood too. Fear and pain are two things most people don't like. That doesn't mean they are inherently bad. Sure, they're rarely fun, but like everything else, they can teach us.
Many of us fear time, growing old, death. But death is our only guarantee in this life.
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Fear
Fear is only as deep as the mind allows.
-Japanese Proverb
What would life be like if we had no fear? It'd be a damn adventure. We'd all be going for it, whatever it would be, because none of us would be afraid of failure.
We'd learn from the very things we are afraid of - The dark, spiders, solitude, quiet, embarassment.
We'd go all out, unafraid of falling we'd gain clarity because our mind wouldn't create blocks where our fears were. It would be a freedom.
Fear is the main source of human suffering. We fear others because they are different. We fear nature because we don't understand it and can't control it. We fear our own potential because we don't really know where it could take us. We fear change because it's not comfortable. We fear taking a risk because it's not "secure."
Most everyone has fears of some kind to overcome in life. They are what stop us from acting spontaneously, they bring us into our minds where we imagine all the bad things that could happen. As Frank Herbert put it, "Fear is the mind killer."
There was a time when I was younger, I was riding my friends bike down his gravel driveway, not a super steep hill, but the bike was unfamiliar, it braked by pedal action, and I was not used to that. I got going pretty fast and froze up, literally not doing anything until I spilled over the front and chipped my front tooth.
Things like that happened alot for me, though usually to a lesser degree. The freeze up is almost entirely caused by fear, in my experience I'd get so locked in my head I couldn't function correctly. Kind of like the time I went off a jump on my snowboard without confidence. I must have looked so awkward floating sideways through the air, arms flailing until I landed on my tailbone. Lucky it didn't break.
Fear will destroy you, if you don't face it. But once we truly face our fears, we find that each and every one is a liar. Each one stems and grows within our minds. We can either let them get bigger, or we can ignore the fear and observe the thing we are so afraid of.
After that year of snowboarding I took three years off. I ended up building my confidence in other ways, and when I got back on a board three years later, I was vastly improved. I was moving confidently and going with the flow instead of fighting myself to try and mentally do everything because I was scared of falling. I knew I'd fall, so I embraced it and learned to fall more gracefully.
Meet your fears head on, they're always a good place to grow from.
Pain
“Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.”
-J.K. Rowling
Pain is different. Our main problem with pain is that we're afraid of it. Even minor pains, which I'd consider discomforts, are generally avoided. And that's how we bottle the pain up, we stifle it. Pain isn't fun, but it needs expression, whether it's emotional or physical pain, it needs to be addressed or it gets caught in our system.
Take back pain for example. Most people who are at a desk frequently have back pain. They may not know it yet, but 5 or ten years down the road it might be debilitating pain on a daily basis. It's easy to block out minor pain, trust me, I'm an expert, but eventually that pain catches up and it's bad because it's been built up for so long.
The same can happen with emotional pain, if we stifle our feelings of how someone is treating us we can end up blocking ourselves off to part of the world. Not only that, but the emotions will build up and will need to be released eventually. This is why people will have outbursts, it's why some people can't be vulnerable. At least those are two things I've noticed that I've done in thr past because I often repressed my feelings.
The main way to deal with pain, is to take a hard look at it. If it's physical pain you'll be much more able to notice what's wrong and how to address it. If it's emotional pain you will be able to either find relief in solitude or understand what you need from the other person or party involved to work through it.
I figured I'd touch on these two topics briefly because they are so important in becoming vulnerable, in opening up to the world. Fear is something I see mentioned in nearly every spiritual teaching I come across, and really working through your fears is just a great way to grow in life in general. Pain is one of the bigger derivatives of fear, and I feel many of us are hiding our pain, burying it instead of allowing it to surface and addressing it.
Right now my biggest fear is taking a shot, stepping outside the standard easy route and believing in myself. What's your biggest fear?
Let me know in the comments, thanks for reading,
@jakeybrown