I’m a little late to the Chris Guillebeau bandwagon, but I’ve jumped on wholeheartedly.
I love his post about fear. Love it. Love the honesty of admitting that he is afraid and love the M. Scott Peck quote he cites: “The absence of fear is not courage. The absence of fear is some kind of brain damage.”
I am very afraid. Of a lot of things. I’m far from fearless and in many ways I think I do precisely what Chris says he hates, which is let my fears drive my decisions. I have blogged before about my own weakness and lack of faith in myself. But today I’m thinking about what I’m really and truly afraid of. What the fears are that animate my choices, that have propelled me into the life I have. I guess I hope that naming them is the first step in staring them down?
What I am most afraid of is of being alone. Now, I love being alone, so this is a little counterintuitive. But I am afraid of being abandoned by those who I love and need the most. There are only a few friends that I’ve truly let inside, and I’m afraid that they will decide to leave me.
And this is inextricably linked to my other big fear. I struggle to be honest and scrappy, to peel back the layers of pleasing and of making the world like me. But even as I pursue authenticity with all my might, I am deeply scared that there is nothing inside me. What if, when I shut out all of the world’s affirmation and the celebration and the achievement and look deep within and see … nothing? What do I do then? What if there is no internal voice, if I’ve screwed my own compass up so badly that it’s broken for good? What if I really reveal myself, in all of my darkness and complexity, and people see that void, that ugliness, and judge it and leave me?
These are my fears. And I’m really scared of them. I’m nowhere near facing them down.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
-from A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson