Kick Out Fear {Day 16 of 31 Days of Filling the Well}

Sometimes, I’d like to watch a live-action shot of my mind making a decision. I think it might look something like a frenzied corporate boardroom (not that I have any idea what this looks like, but trust me… I do watch Mad Men after all). A group of suited professionals all sit around the round conference table – like corporate America, this is a weak effort to give the illusion of equality, but everyone knows who the key players are.

There’s Approval-Seeking over there, hastily pouring coffee for everyone. She splutters and scoffs whenever Self-Care, Balance, or Personal Growth try to speak up, kicking them under the table with her uncomfortable – though trendy – high-heels. She sits next to Conformity and Convention, the two guys wearing  neutral beige suits who keeps flashing trend-tracking bar graphs on the projector. Nearby, Self-Doubt is small and mousy but has a shrill voice that manages to carry over the frenzy. She’s flirting shamelessly with the tallest, most striking man in the room: Fear. The CEO. Though he has a strong, booming voice, he doesn’t use it often. Instead, like a seasoned corporate schmuck, he deftly guides the group to his chosen outcome. And as the meeting adjourns, he smirks watching the rest of the employees leave pleased, convinced that this was what they’d wanted all along.

Watching this fiasco, you’d never notice the quiet folks on the outer edges. Creativity, for instance, has a whole notepad of thoughts she’s written out, but she’s too scared to voice them. Adventure is the one in the funky glasses looking up innovative strategies on his iPad, but he shuts up after Self-Doubt calls him a hippie loser. Periodically, the two interns Dreams and Visions scurry in the room to bring extra copies. Fear gives them a lustful once-over and grabs Dreams’s ass when no one is looking. She rushes out in tears.

Here’s the deal. Fear is a bastard. I don’t know about you, but I am fed up with him running the show.

Lately, I have been bursting with dreams about my next steps. For so long, my dreams were so paralyzed by depression and self-hatred that I couldn’t even imagine what I might want out of life. As I’m healing, the feeling is slowly coming back into my creativity and sense of possibility and years worth of dreams are bubbling to the surface. Which is all well and good until Fear lays down his iron fist and sends me back to the drawing board.

This isn’t working for me anymore.

I am tired of this boardroom. I want to hear what Creativity, Adventure, and especially those wounded souls Dreams and Visions have to say.

Nothing is going to happen to make Fear disappear, though. It’s going to keep ruling that boardroom until I choose otherwise. This is, frankly, terrifying. I am well acquainted with procrastination and helplessness. Empowered choice is a frightening stranger, but a stranger I somehow knew I was always going to meet.

I’ve posted this poem by Mary Oliver on my wall. It makes me want to cry with its utter rightness, like a long-awaited piece of my soul is falling into place:

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Beside that poem, I’ve taped a list. At the top of the list is written

 I AM NO LONGER AFRAID OF: 

The list is short, but it is growing. I’ve added meditation, hula-hooping, submitting a piece for publication, painting, wearing bright-colored jeans, asking for what I want, getting a real haircut, networking with “real” writers, taking a road trip, disappointing my family. 

All dreams – large or small – that jackass Fear has smothered. All dreams that will fill my well. All dreams that, for reasons I may not understand, seem to be pieces of the life I’m meant to live. I’m not really “no longer afraid” of them yet; I’m not ready to face them. But we’re never going to be ready to face them…until we do.

 Today, I am committing to doing one thing every day that scares me. To crossing one thing off that list until Fear no longer runs that boardroom.

Will you join me?