LET’S TALK ABOUT…FEARS
Fear. Just reading the word brings back thoughts and memories of things that have kept me flying under the radar, afraid to spread my wings for fear of falling splat to the ground.
Let’s talk about fear, or in this context, let me write about fear, and you read about it.
Just about 5 months back, I turned 30 and since my birthday was in the middle of the week, I had to work instead of taking the day off. Well, I could take the day off — and then do what? My family’s not here with me, I don’t have a boyfriend to spend the day with and my closest friends are working with me.
I walked into work in the morning in my zombie-like state like always and stopped short at my desk. My chair was gone and in it’s place a paper with the word ‘chair’ on it. Now, that can’t be right, can it? I can’t sit on a piece of paper. Just then I looked up and noticed all over my desk are printed out pictures of various horror and ghost stories characters.
Granted it was day time and I was at work, so these weren’t too scary. Do this at night and I’ll be sleeping with the lights on and my laptop playing ‘Friends’ until I wake up in the morning. I was fine until I noticed a picture of an insect that I hate on my mouse (it was already removed when I took the picture above) and I turned away, whining to my friend to take that picture and throw it away.
I hated that insect with all my guts. I remembered when I was 12 and I was starting to write stories longer than an essay and I wrote this story about ‘Rumble Roaches’. These creatures were taking over the world and the only way to vanquish them is by reciting this chant “Rumble roaches rumble now. Crumble now and never rumble’. You had to keep repeating the chant until they disintegrated. I was very proud of that story — until that night when my parents were not home and I was cornered by three of those creatures in real life. It somehow felt like they knew I wrote about them and they crawled out of the sewers to confront me.
The next day, I tore the papers in which I wrote that story on, chanting the chant that I created — vowing never to write stories about them again. People have told me to get over the fear of that insect and I’ll tell them “Bite me.”
The fact that I can at least now fend for myself and kill the babies of those insect is already proof that I’m working through my fear, but not fully.
Fears of tangible things like that is easy to detect and deal with. Buy two bottles of Baygon and let them stand on both sides of the walls of your room like a knight defending a castle and boom! you have a way of dealing with it. What about unseen fears like the fear of non-existing, or the fear of humiliating yourself in public, or the fear of stepping outside of your comfort zone? What sort of bug spray do you get to exterminate those?
I don’t know how other people deal with their fears, but I’d like to face my fears, head on. Like I sometime fear stepping out of my comfort zone. I like my cocoon of stagnancy where the daily routine I do is so mundane that I could literally close my eyes and do each step and actually not miss a single step. But, at the same time, I hate stagnancy and I crave more in life. No, I don’t mean like running to different meetings daily or meeting new people all the time. I do like the calmness of what I’m doing at the moment and I wouldn’t want to exchange them with anything, except for a little up and down to make the days not as boring as they are.
So I stepped outside of it — taking part in a charity event fundraiser (something I’ve never done before — although I do have basic planning, communicating, leading, problem solving and time management skills from my previous jobs). I’m not about to write the details of that journey here as I’m saving it for another day once the event is over, but I’ve learnt a lot of things along the way.
Honestly, it isn’t a smooth sailing ride at all. I’ve encountered bumps after bumps after bumps along the way and there were countless of times where I’ve reached the point of giving up. The cynicism I feel for the world just burns and burns inside of me. How am I going to make a dent and make a change in the world if the people around me are willing to be ignorant and not care about anything else but sailing through their mediocre life?
I know the task of a philanthropist is hard. Not everyone beliefs in the fight you’re fighting. Like my friend said — if all the charities in the world had people supporting their voices, there would not be any needs for charity then since all of human rights are being fought for and supported by the masses.
People are willing to sit in their bubble of comfort instead of seeing what’s out there and it sucks so bad. It’s like I want to do so much, and I’m unable to. I don’t have the money nor the means to fight. Doing this challenge is the smallest way I’m doing something for the world and every time my faith crumbles, I try to remind myself that at least I’m doing something instead of just whiling my time away.
In the end, it’s not what I do or achieve is the main lesson I take away from here, but what I learn is that fear is not something that holds you back from doing something. Yes, it could be used as an excuse to not step forward, but it should also be the thing that is pushing you forward. Yes, stepping out of my comfort zone is not going to be a smooth journey. Hey, there’s a reason the place you’re stuck at is called the comfort zone — and anywhere out of it is going to be, well for the lack of a better word, uncomfortable.
In 5 years time I want to look back at myself and be able to tell myself, “Hey, at least you did something. At least you didn’t just sit back and let life pass you by.”
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 290,182+ people.
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