This post has been bouncing around in my head for a couple weeks now, due to a Facebook thread I started and then had a ton of comments on. I had an experience where someone demonstrated what I considered fearlessness. And it started me thinking. Most of what follows is based on comments others made on the initial thread, but I’ve come up with things that make sense to me since you can’t write a blog by committee. Any comments would be appreciated. But after I say my piece.
Fear is universal. All of us know it. All have succumbed to it at times and in other instances have overcome it. It is a factor in our lives and should be familiar by now. I think it can be divided into two parts. There is an instinctual, basic, and rather animal sense that I describe as ‘wariness.’ It is what gives you the hairs-raising-on-the-back-of-your-neck, I’m-being-watched, this-is-a-dangerous situation feeling. This really is the “gift of fear” as someone mentioned. That phrase is also the title of an excellent book by Gavin de Becker. I find the subtitle to that book telling: “And other survival signals that save us from violence.” I feel that this sense and feeling is one of just that—survival and therefore an animal sense.
But there is another type of fear, and this is the one I do call ‘fear’. There is one that comes from outside ourselves and we find it in change, loss, unhappiness, and from a higher consciousness. This self-awareness generates a level of fear that the less-aware animals do not have. It is this sense of uncertainty and the unknown. We can look toward tomorrow and wonder what it holds and we can know fear from what it may bring. We can look at a situation and think of what might happen and know fear. We can even have a pretty definite idea of what will happen and be afraid, though curiously, in my own life, it has been the unknown that generates more fear than the known. Once a situation is known and definite a person may find peace with it. Perhaps this explains why some of those who have been condemned to die have met it with peace and dignity—it is no longer an unknown, but a known quantity and you can gain some composure.
Now we come to other side of things. I believe in courage. Many people commented that fear can be tamed and overcome and that is absolutely true. But in my head, courage is the word for that. Courage is the experience of fear and not allowing it to dominate you, but moving in spite of it. But it is not fearlessness.
Some have maintained that there is no such thing as a state of being ‘fearless.’ That we are never without fear and only courage exists to block it from overwhelming us. But I think you can be without fear. For that is what fearless is—no fear. It is not “keeping it hidden”, not “overcoming it”, not “ignoring it”, not “shouting it down”. It is something besides courage and it is more than ignorance. Sure it is easy to not be afraid if you don’t know any better, but that is not a true fearless state it is a false one, a virgin existence, untarnished by fear, and never having known it.
So I believe there is the ability to be fearless. I have known people and read of many others who have composed their thoughts, their actions, and their beliefs in such a manner as to escape the confines and effects of fear. And the key to it is the ability to face the unknown and be unmoved by the myriad of possibilities. The ways to this state are also myriad and we see them today. They are contained in the various slogans and mottos such as Live in the Now, Eat, Drink, and Be Merry, as well as the asceticism and Spartan lifestyles of other philosophies.
But for me, the simplest and most pure way to fearlessness is when we stop comparing what “should” happen with what “might” happen. It is when we allow the unknown to be unknown and deal with what comes without the speculation that usually comes between the two. I am not claiming to be fearless, but the weight of fear is less heavy on me when I can allow the now to be what it is and the future to remain unknown and allow it to come.
Someone else mentioned, in a separate place, Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Less Traveled.” There is an example of fearlessness that is liberating, refreshing, and uplifting. It is also one most of us can follow.
