Fear

I’ve found myself thinking a lot more about my life as of late. These thoughts are far less existential and a lot more tangible, like moving out, or finding a job that I really enjoy. And I keep feeling stuck, somehow. I know it’s a mistake to look at others, and think that everyone else has it sorted. That everyone else seems to have a plan, and that I am an outlier when it comes to the same things. Why don’t I have all these things I wanted? Why do I lack the things I was told I would just naturally come to have in adulthood? Why don’t I bite the bullet and do X, Y or Z?

The “answer” to that is multifaceted. It would be nothing short of hubris to think that I have the answer to it. After all, if I knew the answer, it wouldn’t be a problem, right? But I do think I have a part of the answer, and that’s the title of this post – fear. Fear of failure is likely a large part of the equation. This fear is strong enough to dismiss rationality, and to help guide to me to the wrong answers, to the wrong conclusions. I’m wise enough to realise that failing is often an important step to learning – it is not indicative of one being a bad person. The emotions behind failing can contradict that, and these emotions vary based on how our parents reacted towards failure.

This, of course, isn’t to place the blame on parents then call it a day. After all, our parents are rarely the pioneers of the things they impart upon us – cultures around the world often have differing attitudes towards topics such as failure, which can certainly make all the difference. No, what I feel is important is now is how we can move forward from this, and that starts with me looking at what I consider to be “failure”. Which is harder than it seems, unfortunately. My fear of failure stems from not being some sort of “amazing” person who is incapable of failing – without actively thinking about it, I set myself goals that would require the alignment of all the stars in the sky, then grow upset that things did not work out.

I think this is partially the transition into adulthood: as a children and teenager, the most I had to fear from failure was doing poorly in my academic studies. Though it may have felt like the end of the world, the stakes were far lower. I was fortunate that my parents were not as strict as other parents could be, and I still whole-heartedly engaged with my studies at school. It was not until that transition from teenager to adult, from when I was given more autonomy over my life that I realised I would be just as capable as messing it up. Finally at the age in which I had more freedom than ever, and I found myself burdened with the task of not fucking it all up for myself. I had to move carefully, to tread carefully. The “real world” treated you right as long as you did nothing wrong, right? Finish your degree, get a job, learn to drive, eventually settle down – it was the plan that, while no-one had told me, I had somehow formulated.

But the harder things, such as managing relationships, tripped me up – why are things so complicated? Finding out that the area you wished to work in only accepted people with “more qualifications” tripped me up – how was I supposed to get experience while in full-time education? Wasn’t this an entry-level role? Once that ideal I had in mind showed its cracks, rather than consider the ideal was faulty and not made for me, I instead believed this was me. It was my fault that all of this happened, and it stemmed from some invisible failing I had made along the line. And perhaps it’s true – though not all are successful, a number of people were able to attain such things! It certainly had to do with me. I wasn’t careful enough. I took too many risks without planning it out. My deteriorating mental health was also a failing of mine, that I somehow erred somewhere. So I had to do something different. But everything I did resulted in failure, one way or another, so clearly the path to succeed was not to try!

Which, unsurprisingly, didn’t help.

I still wrestle with my fear. I don’t think humans can ever “conquer” fear, because there’s no real way to “conquer” an emotion. All we can do is feel what we’re feeling, and try our best to move on. Feeling fear is involuntary. Every human has something that they fear, whether from past experience or things that we are genetically predisposed to have an aversion to. But courage? Courage is a choice. In fact, courage is described as “the ability to do something that frightens one”. Having courage is something that a lot of us lack in this day, myself included. None of us do these things because we wish to be immortalized in song, or to have endless tales spoken about our actions. The most courageous of us are those who have the most to lose from their inaction. The ones that fear what their inaction will bring more than the consequences of their action. Fear is a natural human emotion that we cannot escape for as long as we’re human. All of us will fail, at one point or another, to act due to fear.

But the choice to be courageous is always there – the offer to escape our current situation, and dare to try and see what future awaits may come and go. But it’s always a choice that only we can make.