The Other Side of Fear
What is fear really? We hear motivational speakers say fear is in effect false illusions appearing real. Fear is a learned. Someone or something has to teach you to be fearful. By teaching you to be fearful, you interpret anything that is unknown, unexplained, or mysterious to be terrifying. While some people may shrug their shoulders, roll their eyes, and mark their words as rhetoric, I'd like to say the orator is correct.
Fear is learned. For a parent or sibling, fear may be used as a conditioning mechanism to keep a child safe and discourage the child from putting his hands in a flame or say in the mouth of a python. For other people and situations, fear is used to stifle, discourage, prevent, subjugate, oppress, and mis-educate individuals, groups, races, communities, towns, cities, regions, and nations. Consequently, the indoctrination of fear has caused many to live below their God-given potential.
I posted this video of Will Smith because he talks about fear and uses his experience of skydiving in Dubai as an illustration. I, too, had an opportunity to skydive (not in Dubai...more like San Diego lol) and have a different take on my experience. I wasn't afraid of the dive itself. I wasn't fearful of being thousands of feet in the air or jumping out of an airplane with some guy strapped to my back. The idea that my parachute had a 50-50 chance of opening or that the impact upon landing could be debilitating didn't come across my mind. Surprisingly enough, the 1 hour long waiver I had to sign backed by a 1980s lawyer video did not heighten my adrenaline or cause me to wonder ummmmm....."maybe I should rethink this." I was fine with it all.
What I was not fine with was the month of panicking leading up to the event. Not panic towards the fall. On the contrary, the fall was quite soothing. My heightened adrenaline was mainly in response to my workload. At the time, I was the head coach of cross country, assistant coach of track & field distance (of runners reluctant to compete), assistant to development director/editor of the alumni magazine, sole support staff of an endowment committee of ten, and by default the event planner for the Development Director because...well...the originally planner was dismissed...this was all at the same high school by the way. In addition, I was teaching classes at a local community college and coaching for a social running group. You'd think after all that, I would have been making $1,000,000. Alas, I was barely on course to making $50K. To add, I endured several deaths including the death of my grandfather. Oh, and of course between all of this, I drove back and forth to the doctor to keep my body together as I pursued my dream of running. I was stressed and had high anxiety for tomorrow. So I went skydiving. Figured, I'd leave my anxiety in the air and start anew.
Funny thing! Something unexpected happened. I was calm the entire fall. I felt a feeling I hadn't experienced in a long time. The jump felt like running third leg on the 4x400m. For a few brief minutes I felt free, powerful, focused, confident, victorious, no adrenaline, calm. Aside from the raindrops hitting my face like rocks, I was for the most part, relaxed lol. Over the course of that year, I would reflect on this moment. Life would continue to suck for about another year with more deaths, absurd coaches and their bouts of jealousy, an indecisive short-sighted committee, additional jobs, and low salaries...but after skydiving, I can at least say, above and below the menacing clouds of life there is calm, peace. The idea is not to fear the clouds are allow them to cause you strife. For there are far fewer clouds in the world than sky. Tomorrow may look dismal but the sun will break through. Just believe.
