I’m a lifelong student of fear; I’ve thought about it and studied it more than any other single idea or emotion, or feeling in my life. I am, in many ways, a product of fear. And now, I’ve become a scholar of fear.

In recent years, I’ve made a central focal point of fear – especially controlling it rather than letting it control me – and giving rebirth to love, safety and peacefulness.

I’m doing pretty well, and as with many older people, I want to share what I have learned and what has not worked for me as I inch towards the edge. I knew the fear was mainly inside me, not out there. To deal with it, I had to go in, not out. Nothing in the outside world could make me feel safe.

I’m not a shrink and don’t have all the answers; I still live with some fear and don’t tell other people what to do. Take what you need and leave the rest behind. Your ideas are as good as mine.

Most of us experience a life full of light and darkness, good and bad, happiness and sorrow.

We all suffer, and we all struggle. The lucky humans know joy.

My life, like most people, is a brew, a mix, a mix of joy and trouble.

I have always lived with fear, and almost everyone in my family or whom I have come to know has lived with fear; it is a part of the human condition.

We are often afraid, I think, of the same things as everyone fears – we don’t have enough money, we will lose something we love, we will fail at our work or vocation, we won’t get what we need.

I was fearful more than most and of more things. But I am also stubborn; I didn’t want to end up that way.

Our culture does not promote safety and security.

I knew fear from infancy, but I always had to hide it – from my parents, who saw it as a weakness; my employers, who would balk at hiring me; my friends, who didn’t want to hear about it, my daughters, who hated m for it, and my daughter and wife, for whom I needed to be vital.

I’ve often been afraid of the wrong things, I’ve learned. And I’ve come a long way. People often thank me for what they see as my honesty, but acknowledging fear was really about my survival. It opened up the life path; it set me free.

I know where my fear came from. It wasn’t that hard to figure out once I took the time. Most of my anxiety comes from within, a shadow, ghost, and residue of my early life when our emotions and neural systems are formed.

Psychologists and shrinks say the biggest and most common fear of humans is the knowledge that one day our bodies will cease to function, an idea that occurred to me as I turned 75, old age for me when I was young. But I’m ready for that, and I accept who I am and where I am.

I never imagined I would get there.

 

 

Fear, like death and aging, is taboo in American culture and media. Very few advertisers want us to think about dying; if you’re not a pharmaceutical company, there isn’t a ton of money in old age and death – older adults aren’t going to be around for too long to spend money.

And men primarily are taught never to speak of it, even to their wives and partners.

Most people push it away, ignore it, or are unwilling to admit it.

There is a stigma hovering over-anxious people; they are often shunned or avoided as depressing or bearers of bad news and ideas. Often, we are considered weak or sissies. We are the Joe Btfsplk’s (Lil Abner) of the world, always walking under rain clouds. We feel like outsiders and freaks while we are, in fact, like almost everyone else.

I wish I had known that sooner.

It is rare, perhaps impossible, to see an admittedly anxious person in an ad, on a magazine cover, or in a big movie, except as a joke or caricature. The heroes are usually strong and sure, although I see some superheroes have admitted to being human. It’s about time.

I always tried to hide or deny my fear – who wanted to hire or live with somebody who was always afraid? I didn’t. Batman is now a manic depressive.

In my long search for spiritual life, I’ve become a religious cherry-picker; I look at the significant faiths, prophets, philosophers, and mystics and their writing.

I take something from each prominent religion but never give myself to any single one. I guess I’m a parasite.

From Christianity, I take love for Jesus as a remarkable human; he gave me the idea of giving oneself over to others, especially those who are needy and vulnerable. From Judaism, a sense of ethics and morality and a love of learning.

From the Muslim Faith, a need for dignity, commitment,  and conviction.

The power of religion has faded in our greedy and disconnected world. We primarily worship money.

Still, the truth is that philosophers and writers, and mystics of faith were among the most intelligent, profound, wisest, and most valuable minds in all of human history. Perhaps that was because they were the first real thinkers.

Buddha, Christ, Mohammed,  Aquinas, Maimonides, and Augustine, were terrific thinkers. Reading their writings and teachers has transformed me. They each had something to offer me. There was no reason to follow one single dogma. My life is a combination of them all.

Almost all of them wrote about fear, but it seems the Buddhists studied it more closely than anyone. And offered ideas and solutions for dealing with it beyond just devotion to one  God. I thought my fear was big and deep enough to warrant several Gods.

Most religions preach fear and punishment; they use it as a way for the faithful to show up and give money. Do what we say, or you’ll burn in hell, get some lightning right up your ass, or lose your firstborn children.

But Buddhism is where I went to understand my fear and learn how to deal with it. In my readings of philosophers like Thich Nhat Hanh (Fear: Essential Wisdom For Getting Through The Storm) is my favorite book about coming to terms with fear.

Hanh’s teachings and ideas are simple,  direct, understandable, and to the point.

His ideas have helped me deal with fear as much or more as anything else in my life, with the possible exception of 50 years of therapy, which in many ways, replicates many of the things Hanh preaches for $12.95 in his paperback – turning inward for understanding, acknowledging my fear, looking profoundly and continuously at the source of it.

Instead of trying to escape fear with denial and escape, I invited myself on a journey into self-awareness and looked at the source of my anxiety profoundly and clearly.

I buried and fled from my concerns for all those years, but they never disappeared. I was the person Nahn describes. I worried about money, aging, loneliness, failure – my positions, belongings, and loved ones.

But my big surprise – and progress – came when I realized that I had the power to fix this by looking deeply into my fears, and I found that slowly but deliberately, they could no longer control me. Anxiety can be transformed and put to better use, behind the scenes, less central.

I saw that the things that governed my fear were the past and the future. I could handle the present because I could see it and control it. I had no power to change the past or predict the figure; my fear of either was useless and pointless.

I live in the now. I left most of my fear behind.

Buddhists like Hanh preach living fully in the present.

They call it mindfulness, another of those woo-words I often heard but couldn’t quite understand.

That never seemed to be for me.

But mindfulness – silence, contemplation, self-awareness – is for me; it gave me the courage to face my fears and no longer be pushed, shoved, and crippled by them. It took me a while to get around to it, but I am glad I did.

The meaning of mindfulness is simple. It means to look deeply inside oneself, to face and own and know the true nature of my inner self. That is something that can never be lost once it is found.

I did this over several years in solitude, meditation, and contemplation in thinking. Of course, I still have fear in me and still get frightened. But there is also a fearless in me that makes me realize that fear does not define or control me, at least not for a long while, and hopefully, never again.

I even came to follow and practice Hanh’s insistent on the importance of breathing. I don’t do it on the floor any longer; I do it in a chair.

Lie down on your back with your arms at your sides. Make yourself comfortable… Allow your body to relax. Be aware of the floor beneath you…and of the contact of your body with the bed… pause to breathe. Allow your body to sink into the floor. Become aware of your breathing, in and out, rising…falling…rising..falling.

When I studied myself – when I looked for the answers inside and not outside – and thought about my life, the fear became something to understand, acknowledge and accept. That was when I could leave it and move into the now of my life.

It was when I could love through it and beyond.

I’m re-reading Thich Nhat Hahn’s book this week as I recover from Covid. I want to think about it and write about it some more.

To those of you coming along for this ride, thanks and welcome.

I hope it does as much for you as it did for me.