Fear and Happiness

Fear is an ever constant cloak that we all wear, all the time. Sure, most of the time we tamp it down under our conscious mind. We fill our lives with activity and busyness so that we never have to think about it. But it is always there with us, usually under the surface and driving many of the decisions we make in life. Our fear prevents us from acting, from taking chances and mostly fear prevents us from change, there is a lot of fear in the uncertainty of change.

One of the things that I’m dealing with now as I go through my recovery is that my life is a lot smaller than normal. I’m not working so the space taken up by the mental exhaustion and stress of my job are not there right now. I’m limited on what I can do and with a still broken sternum I can’t exactly extend myself too much at this point. So as my world shrinks, as I start get back to more a solitary day to day existence, my mind gets quiet enough to hear the fear that’s always whispering to us.

People who know me, would likely not consider me a fearful person, in fact a large number of them would probably describe me as relatively fearless. And that’s the key point of tonight’s post, we all have fear, but what’s important is how you address the fear, and what you do with it.

Fear is absolutely a liar. Let’s get real and deal with the core fear we all live with constantly and run from as much as we possibly can. We’re all going to die. That idea, that fear, terrifies all of us and there’s a reason we run from thinking about it, because if we think about it all of the time we’d likely go mad. So we bury that fear until it dances up in the quiet of the night, just as your about to fall asleep, or when you’re alone watching a movie, then we get swept in terror and fear. We all have this, it is what both makes life completely pointless and poignant. The real question is, what do you do with that fear? For me, I’ve taken it to heart and used it to motivate and drive me. If I only have one life, and it’s finite, then damn it I’m gonna grab every part of this existence I can get my hands on. I’m going to eat all the foods, go to all of the places and try nearly every damn experience I can with a reasonable level of safety and to be honest, occasionally, sometimes when it’s not all that damn safe if the experience might be worth it.

But I have all of the millions of fears we all have. Hell right now I’m swimming in them. Any bone click in my chest and I’m convinced my sternum is not healing correctly, my heart rate is higher than I like right now so I’m sure it’s a problem, wake up sweating, well it’s obviously night sweats a symptom of afib. A hundred times a day something happens that I wonder is this connected to my surgery, is my heart ok? But logic and information are beautiful things. Taking a deep breath, thinking things through, reading up on my conditions, talking to my doctors are all ways to alleviate these fears. It’s when you don’t address your fears with these tools that you allow your brain to runaway with things and that’s when anxiety takes over and wins.

So my advice tonight is to not hide from your fears. Address them, find ways to use them to motivate you, defeat them with education, logic and information. Find ways to take your fears and have them drive your happiness. For me, my fear of death has driven me to travel, take chances, have experiences and to make sure I tell people what they mean to me. It’s what pushes me to do random nice things for people, to pay a compliment someone doesn’t expect. We’re guaranteed nothing, so make the most of everyday as best you can. As someone who just went through open heart surgery, who now is on the clock for how long his replacement valve will last, this drive is even more intense for me. Which is part of what is driving me a tad bit crazy right now, I have things to do, places to go, changes to make, but for the moment I’m harnessed and need to take it easy until I’m healed. We all have these things from time to time, but if you don’t, or you can find a way to move forward in spite of them, then let your fears drive you instead of paralyze you and you’ll have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane