on fear
and how being fearful is often more damaging than what we fear
…and there it was again. That word. Fear. How many times had it come up in the last 30 days? How many times had its great shadow darkened the doorway of my life? Why was I letting it happen again?
I don’t necessarily think of myself as a fearful person, but in light of recent events, I’m beginning to. You see, I am incredibly afraid of getting in trouble, and I certainly don’t like to make anyone mad. Every step I take is an effort to keep things pleasant and safe. I don’t rock the boat. I don’t argue. And I rarely speak up for fear of not knowing what to say next. But sometimes, that’s the very thing that ends up getting me into the trouble I’ve been avoiding. And then a whole new fear cycle begins.
The story begins with a stupid mistake I made at work last month. I say it was stupid because I knew better, but I just kept quiet, probably in an attempt to wish it away. And of course, it came back to bite me. Quick.
Suddenly, the fear of speaking up in an awkward situation was replaced by the fear of losing everything I’d worked for, the fear of disappointing someone who trusted me, the fear of not being my best self when that’s all I was ever trying to be.
This sensation got the best of me for days. My stomach was tangled. My dreams were plagued. It felt like I couldn’t breathe. Most of the time, I just sat there in a ball - embarassed, upset, and disappointed - beating myself up with relentless passion. Why do I do what I do? Why don’t I do what I should? Ultimately, in this case, there was nothing I could do to make it better other than wait it out. Wait for the opportunity to prove that what I apologized for, what I said I would do better next time, would happen. It was going to take some time, and I couldn’t avoid that. But I was going to have to face it head on, day after day, until things could return to “normal.”
It’s funny because, a few weeks before the event in question, I had been tasked with writing about fear and having no idea of what to say. What I didn’t yet realize was how much of my life was already consumed by it. The fear of loss, the fear of failure, the fear of trying to do right but doing wrong anyways, the fear of rejection, of not fitting in, of being disliked - these were the roots of my actions. And perhaps this fear was holding me back from being my actual best self. Perhaps my people-pleasing, quiet girl persona was putting me at more risk than I knew.
You see, there are some people out there who live fearlessly. They speak their minds and act on impulse and sometimes put themselves - and others - in crappy situations with their harsh critiques and steadfast opinions. But ultimately, they are respected and rewarded. They are confident. They are sure. And their fearlessness is currency and power.
I, on the other hand, am never really sure of anything. Not even myself. And I don’t have a lot to show for it.
So then, if fearlessness is power, then those of us who don’t speak up for fear of getting in trouble, or fear of unearthing a rabbit hole we don’t want to go down, or fear of being judged, end up doing ourselves an even greater disservice - i.e. we get what we didn’t ask for. We come off to others like we don’t want to communicate clearly, like we’re holding something back, like we can’t be trusted. A little white lie becomes a big, mean one. A minor infraction becomes treason. A fear of communicating becomes a complete inability to communicate at all, which is practically a death sentence in our professional and social lives. (I’m not saying it’s right; I’m just speaking from experience.)
So, I’m working on it. I’m working on communicating even when I feel like it’s unnecessary or annoying. Because I’m not just a quiet person; I’m a quiet person grounded in this belief that no one likes me and no one will like what I have to say. And I don’t want to live in this fear. I want things to be better.
Heck, we can’t conquer our fears if we’re afraid to.