Fear is in the mind.
Fear is our brain telling us that we need to be aware of some situation ahead because it represents a crisis to us. Some of these warnings are useful and worth recognizing. But as humans, we have all types of fears which may never be realized or are not worth realistically considering. But we still have these fears. We have uncertainty about the future and it cripples us. We have doubt in our mind that disables us, hinders us, and leaves us incapable of facing the truth. How do we destroy it? How do we defeat the fear created by ourselves in uncertainty of the future and the certainty of death? How do we reign over our fears and take control of our lives?
This is a follow-up on my “Question” series. Hopefully I will have my own thoughts on these sometime soon. But mostly I want this as a role call. Are you willing to help me? Thank you to those of you who responded to the first question, and I welcome all to this post. How do you overcome fear? How do you look past death and uncertainty and lead your life without fear? I need to know how to tackle fear because some of these other issues scare the fuck out of me. Your help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
10 comments:
This fearing...this doubting...it might disable us, and it might hinder us, but I don't see how it prevents us from seeing the (or even a) 'truth'. Rather, if we are going to begin presupposing truths, I would say instead that this is one. This 'this' is that we are 'beings unto death'; we are the only animal that lives acutely and anxiously in the shadow of the knowledge of death. I'm merely repeating myself here, but it seems to me that truth is not eluding you; instead, you are looking at it squarely and not liking what you see.
Phenomenal. Thanks Jaguar.
Rewind a few weeks ago:
Me: I hate coffee shops and something else.
You: Grief, grief, grief why do you hate those.
Me: That's just how I feel.
You: Reason, reason you shouldn't feel this way.
Your fear versus my hate, backyard cage match to see who is the most overpowering of them all.
The remedy for your fear is coming. It'll always lurk around somewhere, but it won't overpower you anymore. Like I said, I was obsessed with the fact that someday it'd all be over, but no more. I know it'll be over, but that's fine.
To me, this is where you need to zoom out. Very very few times in your life will you be facing a real crisis. They just seem like crises in the heat of the moment. Whatever decision you made when faced with fear, it probably didn't have nearly the massive impact on your life you felt like it would at the time. And your life is barely significant, 1/infinity I believe you said, compared to the universe.
Easy to say in hindsight for all the times I failed to conquer my fears and later realized that I probably had little to lose, but its something to keep in mind the next time I do face fear.
A great quote by an even greater philosopher:
"If you fall flat on your face, few will see, and nobody will remember."
Wooooooo
Colette Soler, an author I admire, writes that the “Truth is not sad; it is horrible, inhuman, and horror does not depress us; instead, it awakens us.” The things you fear are true things (other fears, like the fear of failure, are not true fears in this sense), and if you are anything like me, you don’t ‘fear’ them in an abstract way; instead, you are at times consumed by a palpable and debilitating anxiety (for me, it is like the psychical equivalent of a deafening ‘red-alert’ alarm going off indefinitely; it is the only thing I can focus on, and I don’t even really focus on it, its more like I cringe and piss myself each and every time the alarm sounds). Ms. Soler, defines anxiety in a way that is applicable here. For her, anxiety is the “typical affect of a relation to a real that cannot be assimilated.” The things you fear are things you should fear, and there really isn’t anything you can do to change it. These fears are smooth and continuous; there is no way to reason out of them; that’s what gives them this debilitating quality.
Well, that’s not quite true. I’ll actually use a personal (and recent) anecdote to show the three paths that (to me) seem to be available to someone who has got a glimpse of a truth that is horrible.
woooo
so I guess my post was too long. Maybe I should make my own blog.
(II)
I was driving home on the interstate and looking up at the clouds in the sky. They were pretty, and I was feeling good; I was feeling alive, but just as my thoughts were growing delightfully abstract, they ran into something very concrete, and very real. I was like: “Oh shit, there could be an asteroid heading towards earth." My stomach sinks and I start sweating. "Would they even tell us? How much warning would we be given? Would they even bother to lie to us? I think our chance of rocketing or lasering an asteroid off its earth-bound course is as far-fetched as the plot of Armageddon.”
No one needs to tell me that this is a dumb thing to worry about, but just because it is improbable doesn’t make it unrealistic (and also, the 'worrying about it' isn't what I'm stressing; what I'm stressing is excruciating experiencethat is anxiety). It could happen; oh wait, it has happened. However, this wasn’t the weird part (and, for the record, I think there is something kind of comforting in the idea of everyone dying at the same time*. It’s almost like we would all be dying together instead of-in typical fashion-alone). The weird part was how my construct of reality imploded. I would comfortably relate it to the immediate post-salvia feeling, like, for example, when you look in the mirror and you’re like “what the fuck is that?” You see things with very weird, but by no means false eyes.
I see that I constantly reroute my wishes and desires through a never ending series of detours and bypasses so that I have something to want and to do tomorrow. The very way I see my self is effectively outside of time. My sense of being is constituted solely by my vision of what I was and what I want to be. I know that saying something like this is so banal that it’s practically a platitude, but my point is not that I realized these ideas; my point is that I felt them as sensations: they shook me and collapsed me. The modality of human reality is not based in the here and now; it is based in the then and there. But, if you change the modality’s parameters, the experience of the reality also changes. It was weird to experience how a different reality would feel. The meanings of some things were drastically devalued, or even ceased to register on my radar. The meanings of other things grew exponentially. The meanings of some things stayed the same.
This is ridiculous. If I comment again, it will be shorter, but you seem to take these things seriously, so I thought I would too.
(III)
The main thrust of this story is that (much like post salvia weirdness) by the end of the day this fear/unreality had dissipated, it had run its course. It was not a conscious renunciation, I just got over it, which is good, because I can’t get by, live, or interact with others if I am stuck in this loop of a reality where the end is in sight and approaching quickly. I got over it because-let’s face it- it’s a real dumb thing to worry about; I have (much more) pressing and probable things to suffer from thinking about than this...like cancer, or dying early, or dying alone...I can keep them coming. But, the end that I have been trying to arrive at (and I would like to think there is one) is that at some point your mind can stop working that way. Not that it will, but it can, and that’s the only comfort I can offer in good faith. My proof? When (or more accurately, if) you make it to a certain stage in your life (as in, when you know that most of you life is behind you) and these things you always feared, and which formed the kernels of your anxieties, are in reality closer than ever, the power they once mercilessly exercised over you is gone. I offer my anecdote as a microcosmic example of this.
So, in conclusion, here are the three things that I think can happen when you confront ‘a real that cannot be assimilated’.
1. You could kill yourself. Many a good man has taken this route. You could medicate yourself too, but this is not a separate option; it is subsumed in the first.
2. Something in your mind could break, or snap.
3. You can realize that it is possible for your anxiety run its course (or at least move on to something else). You won’t stop worrying about it, but you can realize that you could.
*I am, for the record, not imagining an asteroid that throws up a big ol’ dust cloud which gradually makes all non-bacterial life forms extinct; I’m imagining one that just blows the earth to smithereens. Whatever, it’s my terror-inducing fantasy, not yours.
sup matt
I really will have to work on that concept piece with the atomic grade and blowing the world to Oblivion. Could be cool. Posting on fear soon...
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