Fear Itself

I hate this period of time. The few days before I go back to Sydney. It's not like I'm dreading the return, quite the contrary actually. I treat the school term like a holiday, a chance for me to catch up on the sleep debt I've been racking up over the break, and to (I use this in the most ironic sense) 'get away from it all'.

No, it's similar to the 'book-in feeling', i.e. the feeling one gets when it's Sunday afternoon. It's not quite time to start worrying and packing, but it's not so far away that you can plan interesting activities to fill up your time with. I've actually got a list of errands I wrote down at the start of the break that I never got around to doing, which are likely going to be pushed forward to the next break, but we'll see. It's still morning.

I wonder if it's possible for something previously conquered to come back and kick you in the ass, specifically a fear. I was always/still am afraid of a lot of things. From fears that have physical manifestations like heights, the dark, bugs, water and the like to slightly more abstract fears, like failure, embarrassment and other such insecurities. Since I was a child I've been struggling to not be conquered by these fears, hence forcing myself to overcome them by focusing on something I enjoyed that naturally clashed with my fears.

For example when I was a kid I loved to climb stuff. Still do actually. I have fond memories of the various artificial rock walls I've scaled in various gyms and camps, and more so of the natural rock wall in Krabi, Thailand that my family once went to for a holiday. The joy of moving vertically up pretty much overrode all other concerns at that point, from the numerous cuts on my palms from climbing, to the fact that I was easily more than 10 meters above the ground.

And yet... I don't think the fear ever went away, rather it was pushed to the back of my mind by more pressing concerns. I once forced myself to sleep alone on the couch downstairs when I was a kid in the dark, and yet at this age when I go downstairs in the middle of the night I still bring my phone as a sort of flashlight.

So I guess I am still afraid of all these things, even though I've learned that I can function despite these fears if there is a pressing enough need. And these are just the physical fears, many other things in my life that I'm afraid of arn't worth mentioning here. I KNOW I can get over these fears if I need to, but then I wonder why I sit at the bottom of roller coasters not daring to go up. Maybe it's the lack of purpose that makes me unwilling to take the effort to overcome the fear, I don't know. But the problem is every time I decide to give in to the fear the question of whether or not I'll be able to conquer it when the time comes becomes ever more pressing.

I would very much like to believe in absolutes in life. Unshakable pillars of belief that I can hold on to no matter what. And yet I'm coming to understand that ever pillar I build blocks a small angle of view around me, and closes me off from the world just a little bit more. I don't believe that there are absolute truths in life, but nor do I believe that life is an ever-changing entity. The truths and mysteries in life are what you define them to be. If God is your truth then there is a pillar in your life. And pillars are good... sometimes. Life as an infinite mystery is far more... appealing, to a part of me.

But it comes down to fear, still. We build pillars and walls and fortresses because we are afraid of the unknown. This is a concept that is pretty popular nowadays, that people fear what they do not understand. Cliched as it is there is a great deal of truth in it. I would very much like to embrace the unknown without fear, and not shy away from something just because I do not understand it. I think then fear can have been said to be conquered ... intellectually.

Intellectually I know that the likelihood of there being monsters in the dark, of me falling off a roller-coaster, or of drowning in a swimming pool is insignificantly minute. And yet I am in the end just another person, and fears are not the result of a rational process. I recognise this and still I move on, afraid still, but with the knowledge that the fear will lessen with every step I take.