The first question on my 'taking stock' list is 'what am I afraid of'. That's a really big one to be answering in public and I very nearly deferred it. Then I realised that was the fear itself taking over.
As I understand life all of our motivations can be boiled down to two key drivers: pain and pleasure. We seek to avoid the first and to attain the second. For all of us the simple answer to the question when asked of anyone "what are you afraid of" is, I'm afraid of the pain.
You might think that you're afraid of spiders, or of the dark, or of flying. It's not true. What you're afraid of is the spider-bite, the monster-attack, or the plane crashing. We cloak our fears to make them easier to accept. If we spell them out, analyse them we would have to face the truth that (where I live) most spiders don't bite, and those that do won't really harm you; there are very few monsters lurking in the dark, and most planes don't crash. You can see the 'ah, yes, but…' in that can't you?
Spiders do bite, some of them bite humans, and some of their venom is very very deadly indeed. There are monsters lurking in the dark, usually in the shape of other humans, though also wild animals, or hurt/frightened/disturbed domestic ones. These too can be deadly. And we all know that planes do crash and survival rates from a crash (as opposed to from a flight) are low. Even so-called irrational fears are not as irrational as they may first appear.
When we talk about rationalising our fears, what we're really doing is the risk assessment, the cost-benefit analysis. We look at how likely what we're really afraid of (underneath the cloak) is to actually occur and compare that with what being afraid of it is costing us. This will vary depending on who we are, where we live, and what we want out of life. If you're a home-body with no great wanderlust, a fear of flying might be a complete irrelevance – for me it would be a major barrier. My fear of spiders on the other hand, I consider healthy. I can overcome it, mostly, when I have to, at home…but in other countries I suspect it might serve me well enough.
For most people these kinds of fears aren't the ones that really risk us narrowing down our life experience. Dennis Bergkamp's well-documented fear of flying did not stop him being a successful international footballer….there are trains and boats as well as planes.
The fears that hold us back are the ones that are not about the big bad world out there, the fears that hold us back are the ones about who we are and the world inside…and very often if we are brave enough to ask ourselves the question "what am I afraid of?" it can be the beginning of finding out that it isn't necessarily what we thought it was. Clearly we need to do that before we can set about changing it.
So…spiders apart, what am I afraid of?
I am afraid of being judged and being found wanting, of not being good enough. The irrationality of this does not escape me. I know that I am enough; intrinsically I am all that I need to be. The people I care about, have cared about, have for the most part judged me and found me not just enough, but ‘amazing’. I am showered with love, and praise, and respect, and trust.
So where does this fear come from? And how can I send it back? Can I simply starve it to death? Probably not. A hungry lion simply becomes more dangerous. I cannot simply ignore the fear of the pain of not being good enough.
I know a few who will be surprised to learn that I feel this way. I have always chosen to live my life my own way: this is who I am, take me or leave me, but the truth is I am not as bold about it as I might be. I keep my blinds tilted to stop people peering in. I cocoon rather than connect.
If I look for the roots of this, I find them everywhere: the number of times when I sought out connection and was rebuffed.
I was never part of the ‘in crowd’ at school. I grew up slowly and was surprisingly naïve for someone of my intelligence.
At university, I wasn’t homesick, but again I didn’t find my tribe. I’ve been told many times that the friends you make at uni are the ones you keep for the rest of your life. It didn’t turn out that way…except, I suppose, it did. It was through UEA, my being in Norwich, and the friends that I had that first year, that I met Clive – who was not a uni-friend at all. I may not have got to keep him for the rest of my life, but I did for the rest of his.
I remember moving into a bedsit, making such an effort to introduce myself to other people in the building, only to find that they were all on the point of moving out.
Later in a new home, knocking on doors, handing out Christmas cards, and again failing to connect. Strangely, everyone started speaking to me a lot more, once they knew I was leaving. Eighteen years too late for comfort.
I was never part of that neighbourhood. I tried to be at first, but then I gave up, focussed on work and on Clive and on travelling the world. And I started to write.
So maybe sometimes, our fear is useful in leading us to seek other directions, other places, other lives. Maybe it isn't fear at all, just a mis-placed discomfort of being in the wrong place, on the wrong road – and once we work that out, we can get out the map and choose another direction.
Am I still trying to find my tribe? I don't think so. My coach asked me to talk about failure, about the times I have failed. There are few enough of them to name, but this was one that I didn’t identify. I haven’t ‘found my tribe’. I don’t have anywhere where I feel I properly belong.
All the psychologists tell us that as humans we are social animals, we have an inbuilt need to belong. In retrospect all of the effort I put in at work was about earning my keep, earning my place, deserving to be part of the tribe. Even there, for all the achievement, I neverI felt I truly was. I heard the criticisms and took them personally. When the firm's latest shift of direction was something I didn’t support, it was easy to leave. It wouldn’t be so easy to walk away, if it were somewhere you felt you truly belonged. So clearly, I didn’t. Belong.
There are pages in my journal where I talk about the fear of becoming lonely. It’s largely an alien fear because I love being alone. Solitude is a blissful state. It is a state I have sought out since childhood. But now I wonder: have I sought out solitude for its own sake, or simply as a preference to being with the wrong people, in the wrong situation, somewhere I didn’t belong?
I’m not afraid of being alone. I can, do and will continue to choose to be alone a lot of the time. Perhaps I am afraid of it not being a choice.
But it is. Mostly. Maybe not to the extent that is currently the case, while my life is shifting, but I can recognise this as a temporary stage along the way. I am a wanderer, a seeker. Perhaps I have no tribe, because the whole world is my tribe. Perhaps everywhere is my home if I choose to come home to myself. Perhaps I don’t need a community to serve, because I can serve wherever I am, I contribute just by being who I am and doing what I do.
I can be proud of the choices I make. I don’t have to justify them. Indeed, I cannot justify them, because they are about me being me. I don’t make my choices for anyone else. Others may not understand them. I don’t need them to do so. I can save my energy for more useful endeavours than trying to prove I’m right.
This conflation of 'being alone' and 'being lonely' is a societal construct – one that I think is causing harm to people. It encourages those of us who are alone - for whatever reason - to think that we must therefore be lonely. It's hard, we're told. Well, I want to stand up and say: not necessarily. The two things are barely related. 'Lonely' is not about being alone, it is about being in the wrong place, with the wrong people. If we choose to spend our time with the right people, seek them out, and also truly to spend time with ourselves, we have nothing to fear.
Of course the fact that there is nothing to fear, does not stop us being afraid. We have to manage that, but in managing it we also have to recognise what it might be telling us, that maybe it is telling us something we should be listening to.
In the present moment I can remove the fear simply by noticing every time it slinks into the room. I can confront it, call it by its name. I can take a simple positive action to undermine it, not seek to destroy it, but simply refuse to give it house-space, headspace. Like the spiders I'm sometimes brave enough to catch, I can put it outside. And I can open the curtains and let the world look inside…
…which is maybe what I'm doing here.
