Make Love to Your Fears
Speaking of scary, what are you frightened of?
I know we’re not supposed to be afraid. What would you do if you weren’t afraid? motivational social media posts asks us, as though our job is to banish fear from our lives.
My problem is that I find myself afraid all the bloody time. Right now, for example, as I sit here to write this, I am afraid of not writing a good enough piece on fear. And whether my son will be safe going back to college. And when I’m going to get another alarming call about my brother’s health. And if my mom is going to crack under the pressure of taking care of him.
So many fears, some I’m not so proud of, all boiling away just under the surface.
Am I normal for feeling these fears? Am I somehow failing as a human by admitting that these fears are a constant companion? The internet—and Machiavelli, and Eckhart Tolle, and Marianne Williamson—tells me that the opposite of love is fear. So by living with fears, am I closing myself off to love? To live a full life, a life that allows me to turn my loves into contribution, must I confront my fears and fight them off?
It sure feels like I should. After all, love is the emotion that opens me up to possibilities, whereas fear narrows my mind and my options. And let’s face it, there are times when this is no bad thing. Narrowing my focus is precisely what fear is for. It is a survival emotion designed to elevate my heart rate, flood my body with cortisol and adrenaline, and focus my mind only on the perceived threat and whether I should stand and fight, or turn and run for my life. All of which will be invaluable to me if I happen to see a bear emerge from the woods or a bandit jump out from behind a tree.
But if I’m trying to do something more creative, such as deepen a relationship, design a software program, solve a customer’s problem, or paint a canvas, then this fear is far less valuable. No one can create in fear.
And yet I find I can’t banish fear. It’s a part of being a human in the world. Feeling fear is as natural to me as feeling empathy, or joy, or anger. To pretend that it isn’t, to try to live without fear, is fakery. Real humans can’t do this.
So, what then should we do with our fears? We spend our life fighting them, looking away from them, running away from them, and yet we wake up each morning, and they rise with us.
With fear as our life’s companion, the best thing to do is what you would do with any companion: turn and look at them, ask them loads of questions, get curious, get intimate with them, and, in so doing, let them reveal you.
The first thing you may learn is that lots of your fears are focused on other people, and in particular what those other people think of you. This is not a problem. This is as it should be. When someone tells you that you should ignore what other people think of you, that others’ opinions of you are none of your business, please push back. You are designed to be concerned about what other people think of you. It’s part of what makes you human. The only people who are not concerned about what other people think of them are sociopaths.
So yes, it is wise and good to care about what other people think of you. As we talked about in chapter 12, their reactions to you are an important sign of how your loves are playing out in the world. You need to pay attention to their reactions—at least, if you’re interested in turning your loves into contribution.
If you are a teacher and your students don’t seem to be able to improve their grade with you at the helm, pay attention to that. Their reaction, and what you might be doing to create this reaction, is worth you owning and thinking about.
If you are a software engineer and you hear that most people don’t want to iterate on your code because it’s hard to follow, then honor this reaction by thinking about how your code might read to them.
If you’re in sales and your presentation did not result in a sale, then, sure, you could blame the readiness of the buyer or the quality of your marketing, but keep your mind open to the possibility that the buyer didn’t buy because you didn’t sell.
However, in all of these scenarios, remember that the other person’s reaction is theirs and theirs alone. Their reaction—be it anger, joy, pain, or frustration—to what you said, or made, or did comes from within them. You didn’t create this reaction. They did. This reaction is interesting, and important, and valid, and worth noting.
But it is not yours. It is theirs.
The second thing you’ll discover is that fear itself is not the thing to be afraid of. It’s not fear that causes the problems in your life. It’s what fear degrades into when you shun it.
In a relationship, if you fear the other person leaving you, fear degrades into possessiveness, and it’s the possessiveness that leads to suffocation.
If you fear the other person cheating on you, fear mutates into jealousy and suspicion, and these evil twins then strangle you both.
If you fear what other people think of your work, fear morphs into safe, formulaic work that pushes no boundaries.
If you fear taking that new job, fear shows up as paralysis, keeping you comfortable and stationary.
Fear that’s shunned metastasizes into feelings that are deeply damaging.
By contrast, fear that’s examined yields powerful discoveries about you at your best. When you get curious and let fear in, what you realize is that your fears are yet one more sign of what you love. I am afraid to write this piece on fear precisely because I love writing things that can help you, and I so desperately want to be helpful. I am fearful of my mom being able to take care of my brother because I love them both so bloody much. My fears pinpoint my loves.
In this sense, fear is like pain. For the body, the purpose of pain is to yank my attention toward something vital to my health; analgesia, the inability to feel pain, is a condition that, left unaddressed, can kill you. Fear is pain for the psyche. Feel fear and follow it, and it will lead you straight to something or someone you love, to what you are passionate about, to who you care for so very deeply. In this sense, your fear is your wisest and most loving companion. It knows who and what you love—knows it without judgment, without conscious curation, yet so precisely and so urgently that your loves are revealed before you’re aware of them, or even before you’re prepared to admit them.
Try to change your relationship to your fears. Don’t banish them. Don’t fight them. Don’t turn and face them down. Instead, see whether you can learn to honor your fears—which means listening to them, being curious about them, and admiring them as part of the real you. Do this—gently, generously, kindly—and they will show you what you truly love.
On your journey, you’re told to dismiss your fears, to confront your fears, to step outside of your comfort zone. Yet this is all so misleading. Your big choice in life is not “comfort or no comfort.” It is “love or no love.” When you step into things you love, you will feel fear. That’s not just OK, it’s fundamental. So fundamental, in fact, that if you’re doing something and you feel no fear, then you’ve lost your love.
So, take the path of fear, because the path of fear is the path of love.