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When Bonnie at Original Art Studio asked in her interview what I am afraid of, I recall telling her that I am not afraid of anything. But I realize that is not really true, though I thought it was at the time. I try to be honest with myself, you, and most of all with Bonnie. (She's a psychotherapist.)
I have to get up in front of people and give a presentation in the morning. It's all of five minutes, no multimedia. Just a short explanation of the new curriculum in my department to the university's advisors who are interested. But I'd much rather stand, silent, like a tree or a corn stalk. From how wordy I am at this blog you might think I would like to talk in front of people. Well I do like talking to one person at a time, and listening to them talk back. So what makes me nervous about getting up there and holding fifty people captive, with their wide eyes and expectant faces? It's like flying on a plane. I get nervous about being up there in the air without anything beneath me except, well, air, and the hard ground far below. I'm not afraid of dying, not a bit. I think I'm being honest about that. It's not that I am ready to die. I want to live long enough to hold my future grandbabies and look into their eyes within minutes or hours of their entry into the light of the world. I want to hear what they have to tell me just then, so soon out of the core, before we and all the world around them make them unlearn it. I do want to live long enough for that. But fear of the plane crashing is not about being afraid of death. Sometimes I'm afraid of the plane going down because of the few minutes I would be conscious of what's coming. I am afraid of fear. When I watch a scary movie, I love the suspense. But I refuse to watch them, because I am afraid of the fear I spent most of my life feeling, a constant bogey man hovering behind me, every second of my life when I was alone in the dark, until just a very few years ago, when my spiritual journey helped me to release the concept of demons into the ether. The fear of standing and speaking in front of a large audience, the fear of the plane crashing, the fear of invisible demons . . . these are all fears of something that isn't quite real, of something mysterious, something I can't know. Will my plane go down? Are there ghosts sitting in the darkness watching me? Will my brain freeze and gibberish stutter out of my mouth in the morning? I don't know. I can't know. But if I take hold of the fear of fear and accept that all these things are possible, and ask, What's the worst that can happen? . . . there is a good amount of relief.
Isn't this broom corn peaceful, just standing there, under clouds that arrange themselves like white foamy waves on the surface of a deep, mysterious and sometimes turbulent sea?
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