Fear is paying attention
Published in The Taoist Online
Jul 27, 2023 (thetaoist.online)
When was the last time you felt fear? For me, it was a few weeks ago, descending a mountain bike trail. Suddenly, I see a steep rock and the track on the other side. A pang of fear hits. I pull on the brake. The bike freezes with a squeal. I hang over the edge of the rock, a rock I’ve seen other bikers roll over with ease. Unlike them, I step off and gingerly walk beside my bike, carrying it down.
It’s the fear of death. A fear of pain. Imagining myself going over the handlebars and headfirst into a tree. The thought of walking the rest of the track screaming with a broken arm. I feel the mortal blow of embarrassment imagining another biker pulling up from the ground.
So there I go down, walking my bike alongside me over the rocks. As I reach the bottom, the track levels out. I hop back on, slowly finishing the rest. Yet I’m filled with disappointment, an existential regret. What if that was the last time I ever rode? Did I even come close to pushing myself? As I came out of the trees, the thought hit me:
I’d much rather break my arm trying than play it safe like that again.
I had let fear control me. But more so, I felt I had let my body down. I wasn’t just thinking about how I could do better next time. Instead, I felt that I had already failed at the run I just tried. It was a sense that I had failed as a human, in my duty to fully live every moment.
This was the second time I tried the track. The first time I went down with a blast, rolling over and falling over a few times, grazing against rocks and blood streaming down my ankles. If luck had turned the other way, I’d have broken a bone. Yet it was thrilling: I was fully engaged, just me against the track. The second time, however, every obstacle seemed larger. I stopped where I had just gone over the first time. It wasn’t the physical obstacles, it was the obstacles in my mind.
When was the last time you felt fear?
1. Fear is paying attention
The Oxford Dictionary defines fear as an “unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm.” Of course, fear is useful and necessary. If a cheetah is running towards you, not feeling fear probably means you’ll become his dinner.
But on the everyday, fear is very simple. Fear is simply the result of thinking too much. It isn’t even about whether you accurately perceive the risks. It’s simply about focusing too much. When you think about anything it magnifies the risk; risk isn’t objective. You can take a 5% risk and focus so much on it that 5% feels like 90%. Risk is an attitude, it’s only a perception. When we pay attention to anything, we single it out. We bring it to the front of our mind and blow it out of proportion. That’s the nature of paying attention.
Just have a look around you. You are choosing to pay attention to this screen, yet there are so many other things that you could notice instead. Look at the light in the room. Now it suddenly becomes important. What if it exploded and noxious gases flooded the room, choking you to death?
Whenever we think too much, we imagine harm. What else can you do? Even if there is no “objective” harm at all, if you’re standing there thinking you’re only possible reaction is, “Oh, I am not acting, there must be a reason. There must be something I should fight or avoid. Something I am fearing.” So even if the cliff is just a small drop, simply pausing to look at it teaches you to be afraid of it.
2. Fear is disunity with the world
Thus, fear is simply a lens through which we view the world. It’s not an objective assessment of risk. Being fearful is a decision. Whenever we fear, we are uncomfortable with the world. We don’t accept what we’re presented with. Instead, we try to negotiate. We compete and view our world as the other, instead of freely moving through our environment. It’s a choice that we make to break our natural unity with everything around us. We can roll down the track, one whole environment of trees, soil, rocks and air. Instead, to be fearful is to single out the rock. To see something and view it as foreign to you.
I made the habit of riding slowly, and so I couldn’t pick up speed. Every small rock seemed massive. Instead of rolling over everything smoothly and falling once in a while, I made my own obstacles. I made obstacles because I forced myself to slow down and confront everything there. Yes the rocks were there, but there was nothing special about those rocks compared to the other rocks around, or even the trees surrounding me. I just chose to view them as threatening obstacles. We always have a choice: are we fighting against the world, or flowing with it?
3. Fear is looking at your feet
In the book of Matthew, Jesus asks Peter to walk on water to reach his boat:
“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”
“Come,” he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”
Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”
And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
While Peter looks towards Jesus, he walks on the water. But as soon as he feels the wind and looks at the depths below him, he sinks. Peter sank because he was worried about whether the water would hold his feet. Yet as soon as he stopped worrying, as soon as he looked towards Jesus, he walked over the water. Who is your Jesus? You don’t have to look at a Jesus. Just look around you. Just embrace the world you’re living in. Stop focusing on the water and you will never sink. You choose if you fall, and you fall by focusing on falling. Even if you go into the water, you won’t drown. Instead you’ll just become one with the water, sinking fully into the reality of life.
4. Fear is respect and admiration
Fear is respect, fear is admiration. We fear those we respect and admire. You don’t want to disappoint an idol or model. But what about your other fears? Heights? A large spider? The public speech you have to give?
To fear something is to elevate it. You feel the full height of the barriers in front of you. You realise you can’t climb over them. Now you have a choice: Do you want to cower, looking up hesitantly at all the walls you face, or smash through them like the Hulk? Stop respecting the world. What does that rock on your path have over you? Stop admiring the world. The world has nothing on you. You aren’t small and the world isn’t here to break you. You don’t need to hop over the rock, you need to don’t avoid it. Instead you and the rock roll over each other, together. The trail of life is not laid out as a maze for you to navigate. There is no way for you to become lost. You have no need for a compass or map. Just move and the world will move with you.
When we treat anything with respect or admiration, we imagine that it is something special. We stop before the barrier and gasp in terror. We imagine the thick brick wall instead of actually walking up to touch it. There we find it’s just plastic foam. From the ground, the Hulk appears to be the most destructive. Yet from the sky, we see that he moves through the world with ease.
Four points to eliminate fear
In summary:
- Stop focusing your attention
- Remember your unity with the world
- You will walk on water. Don’t worry about how
- Stop respecting your obstacles. Smash through them.
The power of the world is here in your hands. You can either fear your awesome potential, or live fully in it.
·Writer for The Taoist Online
Don’t think. Just start writing