Fear

A racing heart. Twitchy, sweaty palms. A bouncing leg that must be stilled. A deep breath which does nothing to still the scream creeping its way up your throat that you have to choke down or draw stares from everyone around you. The desperate, tense shoulders, ready to run and nowhere to run to.

Fear. There's nothing quite like it.

It's a part of life, like it or not. One could even make the argument that it is beneficial, a physical manifestation of self preservation deeply embedded in our psyches with the "flight or fight" instinct. Others choose to see its more pragmatic effect: it stops people from reaching for their dreams.

I know people who are scared of failure, of hardship. People who are unhappy with their lives yet are unwilling to try and do what makes them happy because they don't know if it will work. "It's important to have a job and support myself," said one of these people, ignoring the fact that starting a restaurant consulting business wouldn't necessarily cut into his day job at first. People who let fear rule them always have that excuse ready, that "Get Out of Jail Free" card sitting in their back pockets, ready to pull out whenever anyone challenges them so they will not have to face their fears.

It's sad that this is how society works. A society ruled by fear isn't a society I want to be a part of. I don't want to let fear rule me, my friends, or my family. I was all of us, myself included, to pursue our dreams without fear of falling because we all know that there is someone to catch us if and when we do indeed fail.

It's funny how the more you gain in life, whether it be success or friends or physical possessions, the more scared you are to lose them. After all, what does it matter if you amount to anything if life just takes all that you've worked for away?

I haven't much in the way of physical possessions or success; I'm still in school and have a lot of life to live before I can claim those. My friends are people whom I love and yeah, I'm a little scared that something will happen to cause me to lose them one day, but losing something else scares me even more, something more precious to me than money or success or even my friends: my happiness. It took me so long to achieve that I don't want to do anything to break myself out of this protective bubble that keeps me in suspended animation, in a place where I like who I am and am happy with simply being me.

I know I still have issues from my past that I need to work on, anxiety to calm and self-deprecating words to eliminate from my vocabulary. Yet, to do so involves doing something very, very scary to me: talking about myself, who I was, and why I am who I am today. It's a long and convoluted story, and the people who I have talked with about it have been very understanding and supportive, much more than myself. I don't like thinking about it or talking about it because it brings me back to that time when I was spiraling out of control. Yet, if I want to work on these issues that remain, the things that keep me from reaching even higher heights, I have to talk about it.

Logically knowing this and being brave enough to act on it are two different things.

~~

I feel joy, I feel love
Life's a priceless gift from up above
When I see your smiling face
It's like the stars in outer space
Shine a little brighter to show me the way
Through this dark path that I pave
Laden with my hope and tears
Simply because I feel fear.

What is this MADNESS?!?!

In the past few months, free time has been few and far between. Thus, writing and keeping up this blog simply has not happened. Oh well, life goes on, yada yada yada. I'm sure none of you were simply dying waiting for an update. If you were, well, you should have emailed me or something. Or talked to me, because we all know I don't shut up most of the time.

Anyway, even though my blog has stood still, I sure as heck haven't. Looking back even a year ago, I barely recognize myself. I made some decisions that I'm not proud of, hurt people that I cared about, and was generally a person that I did not want to be. I was scared - scared of who I was, who I was becoming. Scared of what I could do.

Note the past tense of all of these feelings.  

I'm such a different person now. I actually like who I am. Better yet, I actually know who I am.

For a long time, I thought I was supposed to be the person that everyone thought I was:  a bright, bouncy student. Far too innocent, far too energetic. I was a little crazy, a little fun; I was destined for great things. After all, if everyone thinks it, it must be true, yeah?

Inside, though, I knew I was different: depressed, mean, full of venom and spite. I was an ugly person, inside and out. I despised who I was, thinking that who everyone thought I was supposed to be was indeed what I was born to be. I acted the part as best as I could - hiding my misery behind a mask of perky, energetic bubbliness.

In reality, no one, not even me, has that extreme of a personality. Everyone has a mix of good and bad qualities. I saw who I was in comparison to who I thought I should be, not who I was in reality. Taking a step back and doing some soul searching was a big part of last year. When I took myself out of the context of perceived expectations, I found that I wasn't half as bad as I thought I was. I'm actually pretty cool, sometimes. A total dork, but a cool one :)

Realizing that the only expectations I had to live up to were ultimately my own and God's was so HUGE that it basically spawned every other change in me. I have heaps more self confidence. I'm much more likely to do something that's good for me instead of something for someone else that also hurts me. My smiles are genuine rather than forced, my peppiness actual joy as opposed to covering up my sorrow.

It's okay that I'm not perfect. It's okay that people generally annoy me and that I want alone time every now and then.  It's okay if I spend my Friday nights curled up with my cat and a movie instead of partying. It's okay if I can't make everyone happy; that's not my job. My job is to be me.

With all of this self discovery came something else: a realization about everything I don't know. Religion, politics, how people work... all these things that just don't make sense to me a lot of the time. 

This caused me to consciously observe everything, to ask questions if I don't understand something. I'm not stupid because I don't understand; I just need a little more information to process things fully. Truth is subjective, so if I collect enough people's truths, maybe I'll have a better picture of what reality is.

I feel like this is something that has greatly benefited me and is something that everyone could learn from. Everyone has a different perspective on almost every issue. Regardless of how convinced you are that your perspective is correct, go out and figure out what other people believe. You may gain some new insight or strengthen your own beliefs, who knows? The only thing more detrimental than blindly following someone else's opinion is blindly following your own. If you don't consider any other view, how are you doing anything other than encouraging intolerance?

So that's my challenge for you, readers. Surround yourself with people who hold different beliefs than you. Not bad ones (i.e. don't go and start talking to gangsters or anything), just different:  religions, political views, etc. Challenge your beliefs and learn about others. Resist the urge to name call or insult people. Instead, just try to understand where they are coming from and really think about what they are saying. 

It just might change your world, like it did for me.