You are offered two choices in this life. You can suffer the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The pain of discipline subsides each night as you hang your hat and pat yourself on the back for a job well done. The pain of regret haunts you. It fills your life and alters your perception. Every memory becomes painful. Every dream is a nightmare. To look back on a life you were too afraid to live is a living hell the Devil himself would run away from. 

 

Regret is the result of being too much of a coward to look Fear in the eye. No missed opportunity results from anything but fear. Fear tells us that things have to be perfect, but if everything has to be perfect, then nothing will ever be. I once heard someone call perfectionism "internalized oppression." It is easier to say, "It is not ready," than "I am too afraid to finish it." 

 

Fear is often viewed as an evil, a dark figure lurking in the shadows, luring us away from happiness. Fear comes in many forms. It torments us with memories of the past or projections of the future. It taunts us with our greatest insecurities and promises that our greatest desires will never be fulfilled. We will die alone, unsatisfied, in a cage we built ourselves with a collar on our neck that reads, "Fear's Little Bitch”. 

 

People have two responses to Fear that have been instilled into them from the dawn of man: we either flee or we fight. Fleeing takes on many forms, most come in the shape of addictions, and not just the hard drugs you hear about in the news. These addictions can be to alcohol, weed, and nicotine, but also our phones, TVs, video games, status games, sex, money, hatred, love, intellectualism, politics, religion, you name it. Now I know you may nod your head to some of those and think, “what the fuck” to a few others, but the point of the matter is we all use these addictions to avoid Fear. We no longer need to get up and run whenever we fear the past, present, or future; if we did, obesity wouldn't be a massive problem in America. Instead, we flee Fear by numbing it utilizing external stimulation, 

 

Numbing Fear comes with the same downsides as using hand sanitizer. While it sounds like it’s for the best to kill 99.99 percent of the bacteria on your hands, the real problem occurs as you give an evolutionary fast pass to the surviving bacteria to reproduce and create entire populations of bacteria that are resistant to our current defenses against them. The same evolution occurs with Fear. As you numb the pain, it does not die; instead, it retreats, regroups, and comes back stronger. 

 

Our second choice is to fight. To wake up every single day as the meanest motherfucker on the planet. This is David Goggins' way. He says he no longer runs from his demons but chases them down. He puts in the work day in and day out, working hard enough to keep the lights on 24/7 so that Fear has no shadows to lurk in. With this tactic, you are constantly weeding out your weaknesses. You are challenging yourself with hardships and rewarding yourself with self-confidence. Fear is no longer your master but your worthy opponent. Someone you can go 12 rounds with day in and day out. 

 

Now, if this sounds exhausting, that's because it is. This day-in and day-out battle is a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. Yes, it's fun, and you'll create a better version of yourself, but it's not sustainable. I respect David Goggins, but he has destroyed his knees because he is unwilling to change his ways. He believes that if he does not run, Fear wins. While, discipline is one of the most essential tools in life and for society as a whole, if it is our only metric of success against Fear, we may as well win "Best in Show" standing on a podium with a nice collar on that reads "Fear's Nice Little Bitch”.

 

I always chuckle at the idea of these fitness influencers yelling in the face of someone sitting in a cubicle. "Come on, Dave, you can look just like me; the only thing stopping you is motivation and a little more effort". Forgetting to mention that, unlike the fitness influencer, Dave does not get paid based on his looks, and his office is not a gym. We project our outlook of the world onto others, but we do not understand why they cannot live up to our standards. Comparison is said to be the thief of joy. But, it is merely just another tool in Fear's toolbelt intended to keep us divided against each other rather than against it as our common enemy. But why do we need a common enemy in the first place? 

 

Humans have evolved from families to clans to tribes to states to nations. This transformation is uniquely led by Fear. If we fear we can not feed our family, we offer our loyalty to a clan that can. When we fear the clan's size is too small to protect us, we create a tribe. When an outside force threatens the tribes, they unite to create a state. When our neighboring states of similar cultures fear they will not be taken seriously on a global scale, we finally become a nation. Fear in these scenarios is the common enemy and a driving force for change. Without Fear, we do not need bedtime stories, we do not need innovation, and we have no need for religion, but I implore you to ask yourself, with all of the things that Fear gives us a need for, can Fear be evil? 

 

What if we have been throwing the baby out with the bathwater this whole time? What if we opened up to Fear instead of fighting, hiding, and numbing it? We have already stated that Fear is omnipresent, like Santa, who knows when you're sleeping and when you're awake. What if Fear knows you better than you know yourself? What if Fear's goal is not to keep you from your goals but to prod you toward better ones? What if it is the lava you always find around the diamonds in Minecraft? We may owe Fear an apology for all the terrible things we have said about it. 

 

Now, if we know that fighting Fear doesn't work and fleeing from Fear doesn't work, what could the answer be? While I am not certain, my research has led me to the hypothesis that our best action when facing Fear is to follow it.

 

My journey up the mountain has had its share of ups and downs. I have strong-armed my way over boulders just for a landslide to start. A snapping twig has spooked me and made me lose my way.

 

 I have been controlled by Fear and dreaded its existence for too long. It plays too large a role on the path to attempt to eradicate it or run from it. I now see Fear not as an obstacle on the path but as a compass for the path, if not the path itself.

 

Joseph Campbell said, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” What if, without Fear we would never have been drawn to the cave in the first place? This is my hypothesis; this is my journey. This is not the end but merely the beginning, and I will keep you updated along the way. 

 

Finally, I will leave you with a quote from Marcus Aurelius as you begin to take on your life outside the family nest and far from home: “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live. Release yourself from the fear of Fear, and life will start anew. 

Keep your eyes on your mailbox, you’ll hear from me soon, best of luck

Keep on keeping on,

 

NB