Wise as Fu*k by Gary John Bishop

Author:Gary John Bishop
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperOne

7

Fear

To fear is to be alive. It’s your job to understand that and to push past it.

Boo! Scared yet?

If you ask anyone why they feel as if they’re stuck or trapped, why they don’t reach for greatness or break out of a crumbling life and you question a little, they all initially cough up the same boring answer to that existence of predictability and beigeness.

Fear.

They’ll say it’s a fear of failure or judgment or rejection or whatever. But is that really it? Is that all? You’re just shit scared? At some level all people, you included, have built a life around your fears rather than your potential. What’s recognized as safe over the magic of what’s possible.

You don’t ask for that raise because you fear you might not get it. You don’t ask that person out because you’re afraid they’ll say no. You don’t start a business or write that book or apply to that college or even go to the gym because . . . what’s the fucking point, right? I mean, you’ll only fail again, won’t you?

And when you do . . . what will they all think?

And that dead and flattened valley where you find yourself after you fail is so bad, so depressing, so painfully exposed, so devoid of the safe cover under which you usually operate, it’s small wonder you’re more than a little hesitant about baring your most sensitive self to that shit again. When you do fail, it’s always a familiar, sometimes crippling button that gets pushed. One that confirms something you’d always known but would rather not deal with.

And when that gets revisited . . . the illusion is that the whole world will see your charade. The game you’ve been playing to hide some dark, deep truth about not being good enough or not lovable or not smart or . . . you get the picture. Your life is always a manifestation, in real time, of what you’re painfully trying to hide behind the mask.

So we stop at fear. We give in to the paltry explanation, which is why fear is the most commonly used word to explain or excuse a life. Even in the workshops I’ve facilitated, the group agreement for fear is tangible and often argued for. People will back each other’s fears up and demand their right to live a life of fear without ever really examining the cost of such a thing.

But in reality, it’s a misplaced fear. Truthfully, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Well, not a lot, let’s put it that way.

Sure, there are some things to be legitimately scared of. If you’re swimming in the ocean, basking in the quiet satisfaction and bliss of nature and then start to hear the dull, growing tones of the Jaws theme music accompanied by a soft swish of the water behind you, okay, I think most people would say it’s appropriate to be afraid. However, be sure to check before you start screaming for your life, as it’s most likely a random cello player on vacation splashing next to you.

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