The Fear Project by Jaimal Yogis

Author:Jaimal Yogis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rodale Inc.
Published: 2012-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

When I was 12, among a whole bedroom full of surf photos from around the globe, I tacked up a Surfer magazine spread of Clark hurtling down a 50-foot green Mavericks beast. Even then, my relationship with the place was split. On the one hand, I yearned to be Clark, to know what it’s like to dance gracefully with one of nature’s most raw and ancient powers, not to mention be part of that elite club of athletes. But when I actually thought in terms of cause and effect, and I considered the black depths Clark could be pushed into if he fell, I felt an equal and opposite chill.

In so many life events—a job interview, a speech, a white-shark dive—the physical sensation of fear, the emotion, comes first. Rational thought—a product of the modern brain—must then attempt to convince the body to approach despite those nerves. This is, in part, what’s going on with me now as I pull on my wetsuit and shakily screw the fins into my board. But my relationship with Mavericks is also more complex. Like a child drawn to bright color, the emotion that hit me as a 12-year-old was an indescribable urge to approach that magnificent power, to be on that wave. Then, I didn’t know where the attraction to Mavericks was coming from, but as I learned from Hanson, if there is a drive we social primates have that is as primal as fear, it’s the drive to belong to the pack, and I was likely being guided by that unconscious urge to be part of the coolest pack I knew, the Mavericks crew. Fear—in this case triggered by rational thinking, rather than sense stimulation—was the one emotion that could quell this other ancient urge.

Almost 2 decades later, I feel myself split between the same complex array of thoughts and emotions. But there’s also another feeling gurgling underneath them all. Maybe it’s that childhood yearning finally come, after years of training, to fruition. Maybe it’s a belief that this is destiny. Maybe it’s a glimmer of faith. But there’s a sensation in my chest—one I have also felt in the stillness of meditation— that is utterly confident. It’s as if my intellectual debate about Mavericks’ danger, and even the emotional swaying I’ve done for years, is just the chop and pitch of waves on the surface of my mind. But underneath, deep below, there is more stability, more ease with darkness. And it’s this sensation, I think, that is overriding the others, leading me into the lagoon and out to sea.

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