Reflections: Fear

Roast beef with gravy AND horseradish! At the same time! Mashed potatoes, cooked corn and carrots, coffee and mint-chocolate chip ice cream!

Not bad for a free meal, eh? Well, I dropped a fiver in the collection box which I do most of the time. Otherwise, when times are tough, I wash a few giant pots and pans as a contribution.

The topic at this circles dinner celebration is fears, and how we have conquered them.

Some extolled the comforting virtues of their Saviour. Others had more earthly entities to praise. One excellent dad talked about the actual nightmares from the early days of parenting: in which terrible dangers loomed over his offspring who were always just out of his reach, and how he had to finally trust in the benevolence of higher powers, and relinquish absolute custody in his mind; something that bears relevance to my own mind and the troubles it so recently suffered, but which I truly seem to have finally found legitimate peace with.

I spoke of the fears which still haunted me at the age of thirty-one; fears so common they were not perceived as fears at the time, but which I suffered for nevertheless, unequipped to figure the accounting:

The fear of being poor; of being disrespected; of being unpopular; of being wrong; of getting caught in a lie; or losing my job; my car; my house; the love-relationship which seemed to garner popular admiration for its longevity, and for how darn cute we were in public.

While being monsters at home.

And I spoke of the unexpected solution: getting dumped from that relationship after twelve years-and-change, and then just days later, getting laid off from the occupation I had coveted for an equal duration: How I seemed to have lost everything, including the house.

But that I discovered how the groove I thought my life had been in, was really a rut.

How that blessed period of material freedom (via generous severance package and home equity) and this new freedom from societal investments in the mind of a person with mature perspectives on the world - compared to the usual free-minded of our society; the youths who conversely lack experience to draw upon, presented a very rare and golden opportunity, and a rare salvation.

The soul searching, the decision to write, the blank page, the questions and the search for truth. The courage and self-accusation, the discovery of illusion in the gap between consciousness and instinct, the immense ubiquity of it, but finally the mastery of context and the break-through to the wisest, universal perspectives… and the resulting freedom from the great majority of fears that nearly everyone inherits without knowing they have. Ninety-nine per cent of fears are the product of illusions, and simply evaporate once you see clearly.

Not everyone can have the privilege of losing everything around age thirty. That is a shame.

But most can find more time for solitude and creativity, which is where the process starts. It doesn’t require talent to win the best prizes that art offers. It’s all in the experience; not the product.