On fear and fearlessness: two ways of being

Fear always stopped my every wish to give.
I opted out, broke hearts, but most of all
I broke my own. I would not let it live
Lest it should make me lose control and fall.
Elizabeth Jennings, Words from Traherne

I have noticed recently the prevalence of fear in my experience of life. Fear of letting people down, fear of failure, fear of being “found out” as less than I appear to be, fear of getting it wrong in some non-specified way, fear of losing the friendships and other relationships that mean so very much to me. So I have been paying attention to the experience of fear and how it drives my behaviour.

The physical experience of fear is very powerful, almost overwhelming. Tightness in my chest, heart pounding, tension across my shoulders, the proverbial sweaty palms. And there is too a sense of narrowing, of the world constricting and space closing down, closing in. And I often react by opting out, breaking my own heart in the process of trying to avoid that painful feeling of fear. I don’t give my all to a project, or I don’t stay open and present in a conversation. Sometimes I can go whole days being so driven by fear, without realising it, that I am absolutely unable to be in the present moment, and I distract myself by playing games or reading on my phone, or living in memory, or doing anything other than face whatever it is that I fear. I condemn myself to a curious half-life, meeting the world at a distance, joylessly.

And yet I know it doesn’t have to be this way. I have tasted another way to be – a way of being which is joyful and expansive and deeply engaged, where it feels as though I have stepped through a narrow gate into an open field with the sun shining and the grass green and I can run and dance to my heart’s content. I’m a terrible dancer, but in that state of being every movement feels like dancing, as though there is both complete freedom and complete inevitability.

It’s a stark contrast. I know I want to live more of my life in that second way of being, so how do I do that? The answer is at once blindingly obvious and completely counter-intuitive – and far easier said than done, of course. It is to approach my fear with kindness rather than running away from it, to expand the space around it so that my heart can hold the fear and everything else at the same time. It is to open up rather than close down, to step in towards the fear and to let it be as part of the ever-flowing stream of life. And in the moment that comes down to noticing it, noticing the thoughts and the physical sensations and breathing into them, telling myself that it’s okay, this is just what’s here right now – and not trying to change it but not fixating on it either.

It feels as though I have come to a watershed moment, a turning point. There is a line in the sand – this far and no further. I am no longer willing to allow myself to be held back by fear. I no longer want to continue to break my own heart by opting out. I want to give, open-heartedly and fearlessly. I want to live, to lose control and fall and trust that I will fly.