There are two things generating fear for me. One is the fear of a potential impending death by cancer, and the second is of making this move to North Carolina and not being able to find a teaching job because they will no longer exist by the time I arrive. Interestingly, as I write these two fears I see why I feel so stressed and anxious, as they are double headed llama fears, only these fears aren't pulling, they are pushing me in opposite directions. If I consider staying at the canyon, the first fear kicks in and makes me feel anxious about staying here when I should be carpeing the hell right out of the diem. But if I were to start packing for the move, the second fear kicks me in the gut and forces me to back down into the safe corner of my warm little home. I'm damned by fear if I do and don't.
The first fear is easy enough to overcome, thanks to my friend Patty's great wisdom. She told me that my situation is not unique to my cancer, that any one of us could die tomorrow by any number of accidents or what have you. She's right. I may be more aware of that potential, but she's right. If we all lived and made life decisions based on the fear that we should eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die, then we would all stay in bed balled up inside of that fear! It takes great courage to get up and face any day, for any one of us.
The second fear is not so easy to tame, as our lovely fear-mongering media seems to be doing their job all too well. But what is the worst thing that can happen if I were to pack everything up, spend the summer up in Nova Scotia, then head down the coast and just find a way to make it all work? What if the fear is nothing more than illusion? What if everything works out just fine? What if I'm supposed to go swimming with the dolphins and trust that I will land just fine on that wild and distant shore?
One of my spirit heroes is a Jewish woman who lived in Germany during the Nazi regime. I once read how she refused to let fear over take her life, so she protested fear's oppressive rule over her spirit and mind by refusing to lock her front door and sitting on her front steps in full view of the Nazi soldiers driving by in their military vehicles in search of Jewish people to collect up for their holocaustic schemes. I love this woman. She makes me want to sit at the edge of the canyon and laugh in the face of my own tiny little fears. She is the best me I could ever possibly want to be.
Fear is exactly how we are controlled by whatever dark forces there are in the world. Our fears build cages of artificial boundaries around our hopes and dreams. . . .until one day we wake up with no more diem's to carpe and nothing to show for a life lived in fear but the empty promises whispered up from within our very own hearts.