Keep a little fire burning, however small, however hidden...

On fear and the unknown.

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” - Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist.

This morning I woke up early, well before light, to the sound of a scratch on the door. It was a light scratch. I’d been lying in bed in the dark, hoping to go back to sleep, but I felt rested, and my brain was telling me to get up. But being just a few minutes after five am I wanted more sleep. But when I heard the scratch I looked over to see the door was open. Poking his nose in, knowing he could and often does easily just push the door open if he wanted to, I saw the night shapes of Acre peering his nose in towards me. He wanted outside. This isn’t really typical behavior for him. He’s generally a very good sleeper, but his bed is in the stair landing, and there is a window at the floor by his bed, and he watches all the going-ons in the yard at night, and sometimes the movement of a deer, a raccoon, or a rabbit is too much for him. But he’s also a herder that sometimes eats unspeakable things and his belly is known to have disturbances. So I got up to let him out, either to chase or use the facilities. Regardless, I was awake.

I don’t turn my phone on for at least an hour when I wake up. I started building this habit last year and it’s become a routine I swear by. My first hour of brain space is reserved for me and whomever I’m around. No one else. So like most mornings I went downstairs, lit the fire, heated water, turned on a lamp, and sat down with my journal. Sometimes I’ll read, but typically the first part of the morning is for writing. No agenda, just sifting through thoughts.

Around 7:30 after I’d made coffees for myself and El, I turned on my phone to have a look around. The world comes flooding in. Tragedy after tragedy. A war in Gaza. A murder in Georgia. Protestors in Europe. Climate crisis. Farmers striking. Funding needed for Ukraine, or else Russia will kill us all! The border. People’s rights. Lack of water. Flooding. And on and on and on.  This was the first five minutes. And this is precisely why I don’t open my phone when I first wake up. None of these tragedies are within 1000 miles of my home. None of them can I actually do a damn thing about. Most of them are completely sensationalized. None of them matter whether or not I actually know the news about them. It changes nothing except for the flow of thoughts in my mind.

And here we come upon a theme I’ve been harping on quite a bit this last year in writing, and the last few years discussing with friends. Why do we do this to ourselves? What is the point of “being informed?” Most all of this news is disseminated for political power and money, not to help us go about our lives better. We are told that if we aren’t informed about all of it we can’t possibly know how to vote… right. So it’s tragically important for us to inundate ourselves with every foreign and domestic tragedy so we can choose between one of two candidates sponsored by the exact same industries. Nope. We don’t need it. Fear is used specifically in media to get our attention and hold it. It is used by governments around the world, and has been through history, to control a populations thoughts and direct their energy. This isn’t cynicism, it’s fact. Fear turns people against one another. It keeps their eye off the ball. Fear is a control mechanism when we use it against ourselves, or when others use it against us. Both are possible. And common.

Fear is a great way to get attention. And fear is a reasonable thing to experience from time to time, but this day and age the media uses it to suck us in. It creates advertising dollars. And it creates control. And while there are plenty of things we should perhaps rationally fear (a mountain lion that standing in front of you on the trail), most of the things we are confronted with in the media are not those things. And more importantly, as we allow the media to become ever increasing purveyors of fear, we are truly harming and hampering a young generation on their ability to thrive and see the world more clearly. While there is tragedy in the world, the world is not a tragic place. On any given day the people involved in wars around the world are but a tiny fraction of human existence. And with regards to natural disasters as told to us by the media, there has never been a better time in history to be a human. As Michael Shellenberger points out in his book Apocalypse Never, while our population has increased exponentially on earth in the last 100 years, there are fewer total deaths from natural disasters than ever before in recorded history because of our technological advances. But that is not the story we are being told. We are told we need to be existentially afraid, of everything. And why? One simple word comes to mind. Control.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I promise. Ok, maybe a little. But when it comes to control and fear I truly believe governments and media work in concerted efforts to control the narrative to decide how and when to use the money they raise in taxes. Why media plays along I’m not actually sure. We used to have skeptics in media. But now when you turn on MSNBC or NPR or CNN or Fox, they are all the same. They do not do reporting, they just literally interview government officials for statements. No questions. No background research. No contrary opinions stated. When you start to see it, it’s a wonder, how many stories can all be tied to whatever the agenda of the day is. Ukraine & specifically military Funding. Climate Change. These seem to be the two biggest threats to humanity right now. According to media. We need to tax more than ever to solve these two problems.

But is it? I’m not so sure. This last week there was a story that spread like wildfire across the media channels. Russia was going to devastate the satellite system with nuclear weapons! Rachel Maddow was beside herself. This was an existential threat to humanity! She literally threw her arms into the air.

But was this really a threat? No. And a lot of experts on the subject don’t think so either. And it only takes about 4 seconds of thinking through it to realize why. Russia shares the exact same atmosphere for its satellites. And something as imprecise and large scale as a nuclear weapon unleashed in that space will have no discernment  between Russian and American satellites. So what was going on?

This story, just one example from the week, is a way of scaring the population to get behind a funding bill in Congress to send billions of dollars to fund our proxy war in Ukraine. And it is a proxy war, and one that resides on a very slippery slope. The US is the largest funder of this war. The only thing we are not doing is sending our young men to fight or firing the missiles from our equipment. The goal is to get Americans to be afraid enough to just fund the damn the thing, winning, logic, and desire for peace all be damned. It’s presented as a binary situation. You either are for spending billions on Ukraine, or you are support Putin. No room for nuance. No room for actual discussion.

Ok, I went off course a little. I don’t even mean for this to be a discourse on geopolitics or the American political system. Where I’ve been meaning to steer this is back to fear. The thing I want to face head on. Back how to deal with it. How to circumvent it. How to overcome it. Because while these fears are dominant in our media landscape, I think most of us deal with more subtle and personal fears that we can learn to recognize and will actually help us live more productive lives. Fears that have nothing to do with the things we are told about in the media. That lurk in our minds. That subtly control our decision making. That sometimes grip us invisibly and prevent us from doing things we want to do. Or to explore in ways we are curious but have trepidation.

I grew in up in farm country. To get to the house I lived in you made a turn off of a rural two lane highway north of Indianapolis on to a gravel country road. You follow that road a mile and half or so past a few homes set way back, and several fields with woods in between, and then turn onto a small gravel driveway. Then you still had a quarter mile drive winding back to the house I was raised in, past a stable, a barn, and a little further. The geography is a mix of fields and hardwood forests around the edges.

When trash day came we had to take the trash cans all the way out to gravel road. It was often a job left to me, being the youngest, and one I often put off until night. I have vivid memories of setting off up the drive way in the dark with the trash cans in a cart, pushing it down the tunnel of dark trees, over the hill past the barn and stable to the road where they were put for the night. The pitch dark was always frightening. Something or someone lurked in the shadows, I was certain of it.

But in all those years, never once was I murdered, mugged, or even attacked. And as simple as it seems, having to overcome that fear on a regular basis created in me a trait I still appreciate… Face the fear, dive into the thing that feels frightening. Fear usually revolves around an unknown, and when we dive in and get to know the thing, it is often less frightening.

Part way down the drive our field began. Most years we grew corn in the field. Side note: I live in Montana now, and occasionally see corn crops that make me laugh. Corn in Montana rarely gets over five feet tall. Corn in Indiana can easily grow to ten + feet. (Is it even corn here, I laugh.) In learning to confront fear I’d sometimes go straight into the corn at night. Ten feet into ten foot tall corn and you could get turned around very quickly. In the darkness I’d face the unknown and then keep walking. And you couldn’t be there with out at least momentarily thinking about Children of the Corn.

Throughout life this became a thing. When a fear would arise, I would go towards not away from it. A fear of being alone in the mountains led me to going on overnight camping trips in the mountains alone. Fear of the dark in the mountains at night led me to getting out of the tent and walking out into the dark. Fear of failing a thing would make me want to try it. And over the years  I found something strange. Increasingly I realized my fears were more psychological than they were physical. Being alone in the mountains was easily overcome. It led to one of the great loves of my life, being alone in the mountains. Fear of darkness led to night walks with a camera.

But as we get older our fears shift. Fear of having children for fear that I might fail them. Fear of trying a new thing was tied to fear of failure. Fear of growing a family for fear I might fail at it. (Who wants to raise a psychopath? No one wants credit for that!) And it is a perfect illustration of what most fear is… absurd. It’s mental. There is no actual thing that will damage us, but a perception that we will be hurt. And it’s tied to the fact that we sometimes forget just how resilient we are as creatures.

Most fears we face are only small obstructions we place before ourselves as an excuse to not move forward. A thing we can point to if necessary as an excuse for why we didn’t do something, why we didn’t try. Sometimes we place them ourselves, sometimes we let society place them there for us, and we willingly let them remain. Society, if you are willing to listen to it, will give you an excuse to not do anything.

Don’t write that book. It won’t get published anyway. Do you know how hard it is to get a publisher?

Don’t start a business. 75% fail.

Don’t get married, 50% fail anyway.

Why would you put your work into a job, no one cares about you anyways. It’s all a dead end.

Who would want to raise kids in this world? It’s all going to end in disaster anyways.

Why travel when you just have to come home? You might get sick, mugged, or even worse die.

Why fall in love when you might get hurt.

Society is great for living in, but should not be listened to.

And the truth is, all those things might happen. Failure is an inevitability if you do enough in life. But it’s equally inevitable even if we do nothing. Failure isn’t a negative. Failure is a step forward. Fear is an illusion we use to tell ourselves our lives are safe as they are, and that if we immobilize we can protect. It’s an absurdity that ignores the motion of time.

And just because a bad thing happens doesn’t mean the end. Nor does it mean it couldn’t be worse.

“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.” - McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses.

It’s just life. Up, down. Good, bad. But fear will only stall us.

Life goes forward. With or without us. Those that are willing to tackle fear, overcome the challenges moving forward presents, will live a very different life than those that let the rumors and horrific ideas of fear stop them in their tracks. Most of the rumors and horrific ideas are untrue, or even when true, not ever going to be part of our story. Learning to look out for fear is a valuable tool. You realize just how much we are presented with things to be scared of. You realize how much people use it wield control and manipulate, both at a societal level, and a personal level. For me, when I hear it now, either in my head or out in society, I immediately try to question it. Face it. Dig deeper. Learn about it. And the more you learn about a thing the less frightening it generally becomes. The world of possibility opens up. Potential expands. We see new paths, new opportunities, all that were once shuddered behind a veil of ether. You walk into the corn field and realize there is nothing there that is going to kill you. All the things you thought were there are not. Fear is an illusion that simply is holding us back.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” - Frank Herbert, DUNE.

I posted the following slide on Instagram back in 2020. Seems appropriate here.

Until next week, Lawson.