The Art of Fear

13 minute read

MICRO-FEAR

After an indoor soccer game, our team decides to go to a new beer hall in town.  Rumor has it that ping-pong tables abound.  Sweet as.

I walk in, survey the scene, and recognize an old colleague.  I clench up.  I have been avoiding all things associated with former work place.  What to say?  I haven’t showed up to pay social dues.  The thoughts go--will they be angry?  Will they actually care?  What do they think of me?

I’m afraid that they won’t like me, that they won’t accept or appreciate me because I haven’t showed face.  In short--I don’t appear to have earned their appreciation and respect, based on my internal calculations (nevermind that all math seems like encrypted gibberish to me).  

It’s a micro fear that possesses me for the rest of the night--when I go to the bathroom, I feel awkward and avoid looking over and making eye contact, assuming that the person is watching me the whole time.  I’m not my normal self--I’m a bit cold and stand-offish.  Thoughts accelerate--“He’s being cold, he doesn’t want to engage with me, he doesn’t like me, they all don’t like me, they probably think I’m selfish for not showing up.”  This goes on.  And on.  

Then, when we’re about to leave, he comes up to me, and banters a bit, being friendly.  

Huh?

So: a micro-fear turned into negative self-talk, developed into a projection onto him (“he doesn’t like me”) which resulted in me being cold based on the assumptions that I was making of him.  

Not.  Reality.  

This all sounds rather dramatic, but this kind of subtle fear happens all the time--micro fears are embodied in anxiety, or small temper tantrums by your internal three year old (or six year old if you’re unreasonably wise).  And they’re oftentimes so ingrained that we don’t know they’re happening, especially during social interactions, where they manifest subtly while our focus points outward, and we’re not so aware of what goes on inside us.  

Some people handle them well, others...not so much--a la yours truly.  

It crops up everywhere--looking into your partner's eyes when breaching a difficult topic for both of you, feeling awkward while checking out because the cashier is attractive and you don’t know how to act, meeting someone new and clenching up inside because you’re terrified they might not accept not just what you’re wearing, but who you are deep down--“oh god, what are they thinking whataretheythinkingwhataretheythinking.”  

Everyday, you’re faced with a series of micro-fears.  

That moment with the colleague stuck with me though.  Because I realized that I don’t want to live like that--I’m tired of living out of fear.  

I’m starting to recognize how much control I’ve allowed micro-fears have over my life.  And how much energy I’ve put into worrying and wondering and assuming, rather than creating and giving and simply being.  When I’m constantly feeding these micro fears with attention, life becomes exhausting.  A drama.  A grasping affair, constantly holding onto expectations and preferences and habits and me.  

MICRO FEARS vs. MICRO DESIRES (dun dun dunnnnnnn)

I was speaking with a new acquaintance the other day, who writes for a living.  Not copywriting, or blogs, or cookbooks.  No--capital N Novels.  Talk about facing daily fear.  If you write Capital N Novels, not only do you have no steady paycheck, but you have no one standing over your shoulder, telling you to write.

He said that every morning, before anything else, he puts on coffee, hunkers down, and hits the keys.  No emails, no diving into an internet rabbit holes, no phone.  Zilch.

No doubt there’s the desire to engage all of those things, and to avoid the work.  

But even that desire is another form of fear--I, for one, indulge most often when I’m trying to evade or escape something.  If you stare at satiation long enough, it melt into fear (and probably macro fear, at that); desire is really just the tip of the iceberg.

LA RÉSISTANCE

What about the “oh, I’ll just do it later today”?  Well, in the insightful words of Author friend, “no, you won’t do it later that day--you won’t, because you suck.”

And we all know this to be true.  Because we all--on some level or another--“suck.”  

Macro fears are obvious.  They jump you, smack you in the face and grab your whole body and shake it like a puppet.  They’re like a big spider that wraps you up and puts you in a stretcher and carries you out into the middle of a desert and leave you there with a bag of a potato chips and a two liter Mountain Dew.  Macro fears are mean.  They’re in ‘control.’

But they’re obvious.  You can see them and they feel all-consuming and wield Old Testament thunder.

For example, when I simply think about having to make a long-term commitment--either to my girlfriend, or to someone that I will be somewhere in six months, or to working a job for the next two years (agh I can’t even type that without getting the jeebies)--I freeze.  Cold turkey.  The world keeps spinning, but I’m dragging my feet, and trying to hold reality back from flowing onward.

Micro-fears take are more subtle--it’s 7:28am, and my list of micro fears is already at 12 (I’m keeping count for now).  And it’s all variations and spin-offs of the fear of being rejected (#3 calling friend to ask him if he wants to join a men’s group that I just joined, #8 admitting to acquaintance that I haven’t found a place to stay for the conference this weekend and facing the shame of asking if I can crash with him, #12 what if people don’t agree with this definition of Art when I post this?).  The meter is running, clearly.  

They take on different voices and are shape-shifting, conniving back-stabbers.  Enter: “Oh, I’ll just do it later today.”  They are the kid of the debate team in high school who could wreck the other side, switch teams halfway through, and then destroy his own original team (Michael Jordan used to do to his teammates during practice; consolation: you’ve got a bunch of little Michael Jordan’s running around inside you! (?!)).  

I suddenly become a top-notch escape artist hollywood stunt-double scheming masterminding child-genius when it comes to making excuses.  My brain starts making quantum leaps and plugging in algorithms and speaking Mandarin fluently and selling the pants off of me.  And I’m buying.  Oh, I am buying.  And the more I buy, the more I “suck.”  The more I give into desires or fears that then control my life (oh, sure, I’ll take another cookie, thank you very much).

If you do break through that initial fear or desire?  “I feel invincible for the rest of the day,” quips Author friend.  Sounds easy enough, nay?  

RESPECT YO’SELF/CHARACTER

We all want to freeze, run, and fight when we are confronted with different things.  Each person has their irrational fears and desires.

If you’re self-confident and are crushing it in your career, maybe you’re terrified of intimacy, and really being vulnerable with another human (I like to hold this over Wall-Street’s head when I’m looking at my balance sheets).  Comparison isn’t the point, but it helps to note that you’re not alone.  Every single one of us, on this planet, faces these little blockages every single day.  We’re limited creatures.  Fact.  I don’t believe you if you say that you had a fear free day.  That doesn’t exist--not if you’re being really honest with yourself.  Maybe you crushed it and overcame your fears and went Superman on everything.  But the fear was still there.  We all have a hindbrain (well, lizardbrain, really, but that’s slightly less appealing to envision).  You’re just… well, Superman.

When that macro fear of commitment rolls around, I experience the overwhelming feeling that reality has just closed in on me, and that I am no longer free.  That I’m completely helpless at the hands of something else.

In reality, that’s simply not the case.  I can always choose to react differently.  But strengthening that volition takes time; that’s a muscle that we’re not taught how to flex so often--it’s a muscle that we’ve allowed consumerism and rampant creature comforts to atrophy to the point where facing discomfort breeds self-pity.  And nothing invokes escapism more than self-pity.  Which is something our grandparents did quite differently, as Joan Didion reminds us-- “They had instilled in them, young, a certain discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible, comforts.”  

What?!?!  No instant gratification?  I didn’t sign up for this!!

But it gets better, because it hints at a little thing called ‘character,’ that doesn’t tango with the above instant-gratification jones.  Character--it’s a bit different than reading Calvin and Hobbes while growing up, and cackling at what Calvin’s Dad said.  Or, Didion, again-- “In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues. The measure of its slipping prestige is that one tends to think of it only in connection with homely children and with United States senators who have been defeated, preferably in the primary, for re-election. Nonetheless, character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.”

Boom.

That’s the muscle that we need to use more than ever.  

What I believe Didion is pointing toward when she says “the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life” is that we fully own the consequences and results of our actions--also, then, the consequences of our inactions.  That freezing, and not pushing through fear is a rather serious decision to make.  It might not seem like a decision because of the overwhelming feeling, but if you’ve taken responsibility for your life--truly--then everything is on some level or other, a decision.  (And let’s leave responsibility vs. fate for another sunny day, shall we?)

That’s scary.

There’s also nothing more empowering.  

Suddenly, it’s not the world's fault for putting so many micro (and macro) fears into our lives--it’s our fault for not standing up to them; suddenly, life isn’t happening to you, but you’re happening to life.  

How would the world look if we acted from a place of self-respect?  What if we froze, ran, and fought--internally--less?  

Well, I believe we’d would make more, and better, art.  

MAKING ART

I read Seth Godin’s daily blog posts ritually, and would consider him one of my mentors (he even responded to one of my emails, I swear!).  

I love this quote from Seth--“Art is a human act, a generous contribution, something that might not work, and it is intended to change the recipient for the better, often causing a connection to happen.

Five elements that are difficult to find and worth seeking out. Human, generous, risky, change and connection.

You can be perfect or you can make art.

You can keep track of what you get in return, or you can make art.

You can enjoy the status quo, or you can make art.”

I like this because it frees us from the canvas as credibility model--I don’t need a paintbrush to make art; or--without a paintbrush, I can do work that connects people, is risky, and is human.  

That means that Author friend is no less artist than you are.  That the girl who paints every day is no less artist than you are.

But change works best bottom up.  So before your Art is a company or an organization, it needs to starts in your gut, and in your heart (and aren’t they the same thing in this case?).

So confronting your micro-fears every day, being bold, challenging the norms and rules of your internal status quo, and sharing what’s behind all of the self-defense mechanisms and limiting belief systems--that is Art.

You could be rejected for breaking your internal rules.  

But that could also lead to a deeper connection with others.  And if you don’t hold back and hold yourself down, it will most certainly impact everyone around you (why do you think we’re all obsessed with authenticity these days?).  

If each interaction changes someone around you, it changes the world.  

The world is my Art.  

The world is your Art.  Again--scary, or empowering.  

You have to be brave enough to break your own rules.  To push off despite the weather warnings.  

BEING HUMAN

What I love so much about being a human being (nice phrase to think about) is that we simply haven’t figured out this whole Life thing.  I love that so, so much.  We’re awful at so many things--we’re terrible at dealing with our feelings and communicating, we’re inconsistent and messy, we’re easily overwhelmed, we’re greedy and selfish and defensive and reactive and we’re subjective as all get out.  We complain and want to control everything.  We’re mistake-prone and fallible.  

We err.  It’s innate.

Which is so, so okay.  Because there’s also this beautiful part of us that wants to contribute to life.  That’s concerned with more than just surviving.  That wants to grow and evolve and give to others--that wants to create and share and connect.  That wants to flourish.  That part is innate, too.

It just depends on which one we nurture, and how much we decide to wield our power as human beings.  

Are the compass points for our lives marked with fear?  

What if it fails?  What will people think?  Will they not like me?  What if I do it and it sucks?

You know what sucks?  The part of you and me that’s holding us back.  How we hold ourselves back.  Because that’s what’s keeping the world from being a better place.  

Because it’s the only thing keeping you from making your Art, however you decide to do that.  However you decide to show up.  

It’s on you.  It’s on us.

I heard a beautiful analogy the other day.  A woman who had previously been a pastor was speaking about the leader of her spiritual tradition, a living saint.  She mentioned a theologian who stated that when you see the redwood forests out in California, you think, “wow--now that is a tree.”  In the same sense, the theologian noted that when the disciples saw Jesus, they said, “wow--now that is a human being.”  

We all have an itty bit of that in us.  It all just comes down to whether or not we decide to overcome ourselves to let it out.

We’re never going to be perfect.  The fear will always be there.  

The fear will never change.  

Will you?

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So how is your art?

What’s one of your internal rules, and how can you break it?  Share in the comments below, and then go do it (!yikes!), and report back for feedback and support.  I’ll go first...