How Not to Be Afraid by Gareth Higgins

Author:Gareth Higgins [Higgins, Gareth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SEL016000 Self-help / Personal Growth / Happiness, REL012070 Religion / Christian Life / Personal Growth, PSY013000 Psychology / Emotions
Publisher: Broadleaf Books

Chapter 8

Fear of a Meaningless Life

I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

—The Psalms

I was looking for reasons to stay. Well, actually, I was looking at my left hand, using its digits to count the reasons to stay. My hand had become a psychological abacus on which I could chart a journey of almost four years, helping nurture an organization aiming for the intersection of spirituality, justice, and art. I had drafted an email resigning from the leadership role I held. The abacus would help me decide whether or not to send it.

This job had been one of the privileges of my working life, and the festival we planned was something I had dreamed about happening but always doubted we would be able to pull off. Yet it had happened: thousands of people had come together for a new kind of creative, catalyzing, communitarian experience and together had created something more than the sum of its parts. There was dancing and fire breathing and liberation; there was egalitarian education where we flipped the tables and had public figures ask the audience the questions with which they themselves were wrestling. There was the mingling of spirits and ideas among Grammy winners and Oscar winners and New York Times best-selling authors and musicians who play brilliantly in tiny coffee shops and writers whose audience is limited to their immediate family. There was hope, and it was good.

After five of these gatherings, there emerged the kind of challenge that invariably arrives on the doorstep of nonprofit organizations. The magic of spiritual activists and creatives for the common good gathering in one place was one thing; paying for it was another. So decisions were made to change the structure of the organization—decisions with which I differed, to the point of forming the judgment that I could not work effectively within the new structures. I feared the dream was dying.

I took a lot of time to think and discuss and pray. I read books about managing change. I felt angry. I moped. I paid attention to the memory of someone I loved who told me of a time he needed to make a major life decision and how the key for him was to heed the wisdom of a mentor’s injunction to steady himself. And so on.

I had the merest idea of what self-steadying might look like, and I figured that imitating it would be a step in the right direction. Someone reminded me of the value of sitting still and thinking for ten minutes. So I sat still and thought.

What were the reasons to stay?

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