Okay, who knew I’d cause such trouble just by touching on fear?
Good. Let’s keep going.
Let me tell you about mine, so that I can check off the “full disclosure” box—I’ve written about some of this elsewhere, but I might as well rehearse the story and make a good confession.
Fear is familiar to me; it has circled my ankles since childhood, its soft tail brushing against my skin almost imperceptibly. It’s strange how scared a woman can be and still be thought of as courageous. I traffic in risk-taking, advising the students I teach and the readers I write for to embark for deep waters only, risking the ship, themselves, and all. I tell them the truth: that the most important thing in life, without exception, is to step out of the magic circles of safety we create for ourselves.
Tapping the same lever to get the same pellet day after day, safe as it is, is for the birds; security isn’t the best thing life has to offer and habit dulls both desire and imagination. We need, deserve, hunger for more adventure, but it’s difficult to move ahead when you’re afraid to step on cracks in the sidewalk, or travel after dark.
My fears wouldn’t have lasted this long unless they met some emotional and psychological need. Just as a religious woman might say her prayers every evening, I rehearse my fears before I sleep. Why didn’t she return my phone calls? Why did he put off our meeting? Why haven’t I heard the results from that annual physical yet? Who will take care of me if I get sick? Pretty soon I’m worrying whether the national blood banks have my particular blood-type in good supply, how many people value me enough to donate quarts, and whether it would be embarrassing to ask them, while simultaneously feeling guilty for avoiding the last blood-drive at UConn.
Sometimes it seems as if I embrace my fear as transcendental experience, as an act of moral redemption. I’m not just going over old material, I’m performing a rite of atonement for the sins of survival and success. I am reinforcing lessons learned at an early age: not to count my blessings, but instead to consider how high the odds are against my luck holding out.
It’s not just for me that the world of fear exists—all you have to do is move to the margins, go underneath the world considered normal, or wait until what’s normal turns out the porch light and there it is, what is feared, scratching at the glass behind a dark window. The darkness is the same, the metallic taste of fear is the same for everyone but the individual causes for fear— the shape of the windows framing the darkness— are wildly different.
When I think about the role of fear in everyday life, I think about how pervasive it is, and how little we consciously acknowledge it even as fear shapes our thoughts and behaviors.
What does fear do? Fear fidgets by the phone until the call comes, fear hides jewelry in paper bags underneath the sink, fear rehearses every word of a conversation with a sister that ended coldly, fear counts calories, counts pennies, counts a partner’s nights away from home. Fear wonders about a child’s friends, a child’s grades, a child’s future.
Fear looks both ways but still refuses to cross; fear looks twice and still doesn’t leap. Fear believes that the early worm gets caught by the bird, and sympathizes with the worm’s regret at being punctual. Fear usually arrives late, inevitably leaves early, and ends up never going out at all. Fear is the phantom hand on the back of the neck and the sound of a door opening downstairs when no one is coming home.
Fear does everything except go out and buy the groceries.
(To be continued….)
