On the mountain yesterday. Today, even more snow!
OK, we’re back to the story about fear. This part is pretty long winded, too, so if you’re thinking you’ll want to read the whole thing through, grab a cup of coffee and sit back in a comfortable chair before starting. Or take your time and read a little bit over the next few days. I’ll give you some time to catch up before posting again.
Fear is an emotion we should not make room for in our lives, but we tend to give it far too much emphasis, credit and weight.
I tell Forrest, if you feel it, get rid of it. Replace it. Do something besides allow the fear to remain and consume you, which of course, if you let it stick around, it will do.
And yet there it is. FEAR. Far too present in our society and our lives and our minds. What madness it brings in its fierce limitations, binding us with shackles to a place of comfort, where we were yesterday, where we see ourselves tomorrow, a place where nothing ever changes. And we are safer that way.
Hog wash.
Cowboy up, Pup! Like I saw Gunnar do – stand up and face your fears. (OK, Julian, maybe not go crashing into a train, though!) Better yet, don’t be afraid in the first place. Fear is a luxury we allow ourselves, have learned to hold onto, cling to it seems at times, but does it really get us anywhere? Or just keep us where we were?
Yes, get rid of it or replace it, I tell Forrest. When you stand over the cornice of a wind drifted snow bank taller than any building in our small town and prepare to squeeze your throttle and send your snowmobile flying (with you on top, presumably), you must not feel fear. If it’s there, acknowledge its presence, then find a different feeling. Perhaps contemplation: look at the situation and assess how best to achieve this goal. Or aspiration: how amazing does this feel to be here now preparing for something so huge? Or practicality: no, this one really can’t be done, at least not by me with my skills at this point. Or, my favorite: hard core toughness. Remember what John Wayne said about fear: “Courage is being scared to death – but saddling up anyway.”
Seems to me that fear is of little use besides acting as a pesky warning that danger might lie ahead. Duh. Danger is everywhere if we stop and look long enough.
With fear, we stop, we freeze, we turn back, we hold onto what we had. Without it, or despite it, overcoming it, we learn to stand tall, move ahead, face what we once thought we could not, get back in the saddle or drop off a huge snow drift. Overcoming fear allows us personal greatness. Accepting fear, well, we get nowhere.
How do we learn to replace fear, to put it in its place? I don’t know that answer. I just know the advice I give Forrest. And what I have done.
There have been times perhaps I should have felt fear, but felt anger instead, and it worked for me then. Though moments after the incident passed, the adrenaline dissipated, and the fear (or reality?) poured in, turning my legs to jelly and my stomach to a pot of boiling water.
I’ve had a few, well, challenging years. Haven’t we all? Challenges motivate us, force us to grow, help us to define who we are and what matters most. Teach us how to handle what we didn’t know we could handle. Sometimes, that includes fear.
But, boy, do those “challenging years” stink when we’re going through them.
One such challenging year was when I was 16. A lot was going on for me. I was living alone (I still wonder if I’m the only kid who’s parents ran away from them…). I was finishing high school but was too lost, confused and without direction (or encouragement) to think about going to college. I was packing my bags to head to France for a year to work as an au pere just to get away. And like many teens, I figured the whole world revolved around me. Without much family intervention, it was a pretty wild world sometimes. Not what you’d call a healthy or stable environment for a young lady.
I knew all about pushing myself and my boundaries. Or so I thought I did. These were tested regularly.
A few specific events occurred that year, which tested my strength and confirmed that fear was of little use to me. Keeping my wits mattered more. Playing tough really works. And if you think that’s easy for a girl who finished high school at 81 pounds (yes, I was one of those late maturers), you can be sure I played the game well.
The first incident goes like this: I am in the subway with a big black hefty bag full of laundry on the hard plastic bench seat beside me and a big bad attitude spread across my little face. I’m going to my parent’s apartment for the weekend to bum a good meal and a free Laundromat. These guys come into to the subway car wielding knives or guns or some weapon, I don’t even remember, and try to mug the few folks lucky enough to be sharing the ride with me. Not many people, maybe four or five others, all looking pretty dapper and clean cut and respectable. Unlike me hunched over with my hefty bag. I just remember looking those “bad guys” in the eyes with such anger and hatred that they look at me, change their facial expression in a way I still can’t describe, but turn and walk away. It is weird. Instant. I feel like SuperGirl with some secret powers. That feeling lasts all of about one minute. Then the jello/boiling water syndrome kicks in. But by then, the guys have run away, and I am left to continue riding along with my attitude and hefty bag.
The second time is a car ride home from a night club I am at way too late and way too young (what was I doing there anyway, and so regularly?). It must be 2 in the morning or so, and I decide to head back to my girlfriend’s house. Her mom is really cool and lets me crash there regularly, sneak in at any hour of the night and find a place to get some rest. A lot less lonely than the little apartment all by myself where I know no one but strange faces, and they look at me like I’m even stranger. I probably am. Well, I guess my choice of guys to drive me home is quite lacking. How much smarts does a 16 year old have? A lot less than we tell ourselves we have at the time. Guaranteed. This guy drives down some dark abandoned alleyway, one of those that obviously have more rat than human activity, especially at 2 am. I have no idea where we are. He stops the car, shuts the engine, turns to me, and tells me he is going to rape me. Yes, just like that. He tells me. Rape is a truly horrid crime. There is no excuse for it ever being committed, and no tolerance should ever be given to a rapist or their crimes. (And nothing but support, unquestionable support, for those unfortunate enough to be a victim.) Well, I decide I am not going to be a victim this time. And right away I realize what a foul loser of a human being I am dealing with. Fortunately, a weak weenie of a man if ever there was one. I turn to him, right there in the front seat with the dark light of the alleyway enough to look him in the face, all 81 pounds of me trying to make this really BIG presence, and in a voice full of this intense, searing rage, tell him to move NOW and drive me home. And he did.
The third time is right after graduation; I’m still 16, waiting to pack my bags to travel abroad. I am spending the summer working at a YMCA camp downtown New York City, taking care of 18 8-year old boys five days a week. Its late afternoon, broad day light, and I let down my cool. I am most uncharacteristically donned in a white ruffled skirt, the kind you’d see girls with braids wear in some idyllic country setting running and laughing careless and carefree down some pastoral hillside. As if I was in Little House on the Prairie or Sound of Music. But not Manhattan. I grab my coin purse, head to the corner market, and buy a bag a popcorn. Really, that’s it. How innocent! Well, I’ll tell you. Too innocent. When I return to my parent’s apartment building, three very large young men, real “thug” types with big dark hoods and all, push open the door behind me, follow me into the elevator, grab my arm and hold a knife to my wrist, and tell me, “give me your money.”
Now the funny thing to note here is that I only have loose change, probably less than a dollar’s worth, in that little purple coin purse. I know that, but they (obviously) do not.
However, on principle, I am not going to give them even those few coins.
There’s one more thing to note here which is really crazy and adds a potential complication to this matter. This little apartment building is an old converted factory loft, kind of funky in its set up for the twelve or so units, two per floor, one on the left side, one on the right, and two doors in the elevator, each opening directly into the unit on each floor. To get the elevator to move, you have to put in a key and then the doors open right into your living room. Weird, I know, but that’s how it is.
I’m not thinking about this, about the fact that I already had the key in and turned, so that if one of those guys lets the elevator door close, up we’d go to my parent’s apartment building, and then… well, I am not thinking there, am I?
Quick. I get mad. And my wits kick in. I point to this video camera in the corner of the elevator pointed at me and the thugs. I tell them the security guard is watching and will be here NOW and boy-oh-boy are they going to get in BIG trouble!
Two of the guys look at the camera and run. Maybe there is a security guard (Come on! In that building? In that neighborhood? I don’t think so…). Maybe it’s just a camera so the people in the apartment units can see who is in the elevator before calling it to open up in their living room. (Of course, it is the latter. But these guys do not know.)
The third guy, the one with the knife to my wrist, holds on to me still. He looks me in my eyes. Deep. I see a stupid but innocent kid. Probably my age but more than twice as large. I give him that searing look I’m getting really good at with all this practice. He lets go of my arm and runs. I am left in the elevator with my little purple coin purse as the elevator door closes and goes up.
You may say I was stupid. Maybe dumb luck. I know. I’ve said the same to myself time and again. “Were a few coins really worth it?”
Well, I don’t know if this has been a good lesson in handling fear, but at least I think it made for an interesting story.
This one is for Karen, because I know just how you mean about getting down and really looking at them deep in their wise eyes.