Doghouse

Fear-Based Life

The Pumpkin with her Papi.


















Today's topic is fear.

I was talking with Daughter on the phone two nights ago and she told me about her fears at night when she comes here. She was fairly quick to add that she had the exact same fears at her mother's house and that, basically, she just becomes afraid at night.

I think that is pretty normal for reasons I will explain in a bit. But one thing that was good was that Daughter did not fear talking openly to me about her fears. I could tell she felt better after expressing it.

*******

I was afraid that same way when I was a young boy. In fact I had a weird kind of train light that would cast a large pattern on the ceiling.

It looked like a spider and I was afraid of spiders. I was eight and weighed 68 pounds.

I still am afraid of spiders. We have a truce around here with the spiders because at age 49 and weighing in at 300 pounds with a massive reach I realized I finally had a decided advantage over most spiders. The agreement is they stay out of the inside of the flat and I let them co-exist with us peacefully on the deck and elsewhere.

We have drawn up no legal documents, it's just a live and let live policy. I even compliment them from time to time on their elaborate webs (which are those pentagonal masterpieces).

But when I was a kid and afraid of the giant spider on the wall I was told to be quiet, buck up and get my ass back in bed! The lights with the spider on the wall were left on.

All to say, I know the feeling of being afraid in your own bed. Only I was afraid then of two things.

My Daughter (in either household) is only afraid of one.

*******

Ernest Becker wrote that the fear of death is the "springboard for all of human activity" which is a rather grand statement given the amount of human activity that will take place on any given day. But he means that it is a core motivation from which all other fears spring, and their own springboards.

I believe their are oither springboards that are not fear based, but I take his general meaning and admit that a huge amount of human activity is based in fear...the fear of death being the greatest.

When a child, or perhaps you, are deeply afraid, what are you afraid of exactly? Is it something real or projected?

With human beings it is most often projected.

When I was a boy my fear was literally projected on the wall, but the wall never ever hurt me and there was no spider just a projectin of my own fear. When my daughter is laying in her bed either here or at her mother's house there is no imminent or present danger of any kind. (When she is locked out of her house in Alameda and does not know the neighbors it is a bit different. Still, probably not in mortal danger).

Some of that is a good thing...at least for others. A few weeks back when Reese and I took Daughter to the Zoo I smirked at myself just watching how I constantly scan every possible situation for her safety. Like a mother hawk I scan and scan and run scenarios through my head and am ever ready to swoop down. She never leaves my eyes unless she is in the women's room and even then I wait outside anxiously.

Why?

Because there are weirdos out there who take children and that is never gonna happen to mine.

Am I just projecting? It's possible. There may have been no danger at any point or with any person at the Zoo that day that warranted my suspicious eye. But still, I do not know these people and people, on the far end of the bell curve, are known to be dangerous.

So I calculate and watch and guard.

*******

Now I would not say my life is dominated by fear, but it is daily present. I could not be so calm about this current crisis if fear was dominating me. You see I have faith and in a couple of areas that are crucial (I do not have it in all areas).

One is I have faith in God. God rarely makes things better in the immediate but always promises to walk alongside and bring good out of bad situations. I believe this. I have experienced this many times. I have many wounds from past skirmishes, but even those have resulted in compassion and the healing of others.

I am a blessed man and not a victim.

I also have faith in people to some degree...even my recently now-adversarial Ex-wife. I do not know why now, after two years of peace and cooperation, she has suddenly decided to oppose me. I have done nothing. But as John-Paul Reese said recently (and I needed this) "Mac, you always see the good in people."

I do. It is true.

I was watching Ghandi the other day. I never tire of that film even though it is 3 hours long. Ghandi was not only a visionary, he also was shrewd. He is the embodiment of Jesus' instruction to be "wise as serpents, yet innocent as doves." He understood that the moral conscience of the Western world could be pricked. The culminating scene in my view is when Lord Mountbatten comes as the last Viceroy to work out independence in India. He does so proudly and his heart is in it because Ghandi has won his trust and allegiance. It is Mountbatten who walks grieving later alongside Nehru and others at Ghandi's funeral.

Ghandi did not fear death the way we do, and thus was his freedom.

So fear is not only a projection, it is also a cage.

*******

Well one of the spiders broke the treaty and came inside. I'd like to say I had mercy, but fear and our agreement ruled the day and I grabbed him in tissue paper and gave him the long goodbye flush. I do not think he suffered much.

The other two spiders inside scurried out quickly and I feel sure a meeting is taking place now. I am not worried because I have the power and they have no press agent or PR firm.

The analogy is apparent.

But back to Ghandi. He wrote that

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

Who can deny this?

And more ironic that we are called, as Merton and C.S. Lewis say to become "little Christs"? Followers of Jesus who wish his life to spring from our hearts and minds and in our actions be the hands and feet of Christ today.

Christ had fear. Although God, he was afraid of death in the Garden on the night of his betrayal and wished to be comforted by friends. They fell asleep.

Not easy being Jesus...not then, not now.

*******

So what has this to do with the current situation? Nothing.

Just kidding.

My daughter is afraid of the nightime. That is the only real issue and should be addressed as such. Maybe we can comfort her, maybe she will just grow out of it. Knowing her I don't see her having this problem when she is eleven. She has been through a lot of change lately (by the way, none of it mine) and feels vulnerable. She's just a little girl.

I have confidence in her. I have more confidence in her and more faith than either of her parent's parents ever had in them. A lot of this debacle has to do with the past fears of adults involved and nothing at all to do with my daughter.

Fear keeps us from faith and faith is what we dearly need.

Thomas Merton wrote the following on freedom in his Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander:

"Freedom from domination, freedom to live one's own spiritual life. freedom to live the highest truth, unabashed by any human pressure or any collective demand, the ability to say one's own 'yes' and one's own 'no' and not merely to echo the 'yes' and the 'no' of state, party, corporation, army or system. This is inseparabl;e from authentic religion. It is one of the deepest and most fundamental needs of man, perhaps the most crucial need of a human person as such: for without recognizing the challenge of this need no man can really be a person."

I feel certain that we can apply the usual translation to include women and just make it "humanity". And by "religion" Merton does not mean the outward form (he was a contemplative) but rather the inward experience of God.

This is what many humans hide from in fear...to be authentic. They live in fear of other's projected fears and this is their undoing.

I believe I shall have to do a part two tomorrow. Keep praying for my kids.

posted by Obi-Mac BakDon @ 8:06 AM