The joy of fear

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. … You must do the thing you think you cannot do. – Eleanor Roosevelt

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This quote is a touchstone for me; my main intention in starting this blog was to chronicle my attempts to follow Eleanor Roosevelt’s advice and thereby become a stronger, braver, more confident version of myself. I’ve mentioned this quote to dozens of people over the years, and almost every time, the person I’m talking to brings up a time that s/he “felt the fear and did it anyway.” This week, though, two very different people who have never met each other responded to the quote in a very different, and (to me, at least) unusual way: both said that they were so stubborn and determined that they couldn’t remember ever thinking anything was beyond them as long as they tried hard enough.

I have to admit that I found this completely incomprehensible. Never felt intimidated or overwhelmed? Never endured insecurity or self-doubt? Never suspected they’d bitten off more than they could chew? Never worried about what other people would think or how they might react? Never feared the repercussions of going against the crowd?  Never hesitated, even briefly, to say, “I wonder if this is going to work out”?

Never? Not even once?

That seems more than impossible to me; it seems superhuman.

But the flip side — being ruled by doubt — seems equally impossible. I confess that I’ve certainly  hung back, kept quiet, delayed, denied, avoided, procrastinated, made excuses, taken the path of least resistance, or simply gone along with the crowd from time to time. The axiom about how the nail that sticks up gets hammered down rings all too true for me some days. Let’s face it: it’s a lot easier, plain and simple, not to do the things you think you can’t do.

But it’s also not as satisfying.

There’s joy in looking fear in the face. In standing up for yourself. In defending someone else. In risking rejection. In entering competition. In challenging conventional wisdom. In claiming authority. In setting boundaries. In examining your preconceptions. In defying your prejudices. In redefining your priorities. In confronting your phobias. In speaking your mind, as activist Maggie Kuhn said, “even if your voice shakes.”

Fear — not terror, but a healthy concern for consequences — is part of the human condition. It’s normal to think you can’t do something. It’s also normal to go ahead and give it a shot anyhow.

This week, find something you didn’t think you could do, and then do it. And come back here and tell me about it.

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In which I play in traffic

Several years ago, a friend passed her old mountain bike on to me. I was very excited at first. I imagined zipping nimbly around like the people in Amsterdam who commute merrily hither and thither on their beater bikes. I bought padded bike shorts (because I thoroughly approve of any sport for which my own natural padding is inadequate). I even starting thinking about getting panniers, or at least a basket, in which I pictured myself bringing home a baguette and a bouquet of flowers or something equally charming.

Then I realized 2 things:

1. Although my neighborhood is fairly flat, San Francisco has some very big hills. And I am somewhat lazy.
2. Although San Francisco has a lot of bicyclists and bike lanes, the cars are bigger and more numerous. And I am terrified of getting doored, clipped, or just plain mown down.

As a result, I didn’t ride nearly as much as I thought I would. Yes, I downloaded the SF Bike Map, which not only shows all the official bike routes, but color-codes every street in the city to indicate how steep it is (this is also very useful for walking). I used it to help me figure out where to pedal in my own ‘hood and how to get to the bike paths in Golden Gate Park with minimal risk, but I didn’t dare venture farther.

Until today!

I figured that if I was going to confront my fear of riding on city streets, I should do it on Sunday, when traffic is light, and in the nice, flat, comparatively bike-friendly Mission District. So I rode my bike a few blocks to a bus stop, where I loaded it onto the handy-dandy bike rack Muni provides on the front of its buses. The bus took me up and over the ridge that runs through the center of town. I got off at 18th Street and Valencia. And then I rolled up my jeans, strapped on my helmet, and rode merrily along bike lanes and side streets until I got to Precita Park, where a bunch of street food vendors were dishing it up for a small crowd and a film crew from the Food Network.

I rewarded myself for my courage with a lavender creme brulee and a grilled Gruyere sandwich with onion/fennel/bacon jam before heading home again. Gotta keep up my strength.

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Going with the flow

I was planning to use the new year as an excuse to get more aggressive about my desire to try new things. Then I was felled by the head cold of doom. I managed to struggle through New Year’s Day and even get out to socialize a few times, but I’ve basically spent the last two weeks sitting on the couch, swilling tea and coughing until my vision got swimmy. Good times.

In an act of desperation, I went to Walgreens and bought a nasal rinse. You know what I’m talking about. You put warm salty water into it, and then you squeeze the warm salty water into one nostril until it runs out the other. I was all over it in theory. Wash out my nose so I can breathe instead of coughing up a lung? Great! But in practice, all I could think was, “This is going to be like when I was learning to swim and I kept getting water up my nose and choking and I finally had to buy a little nose clip because otherwise I was afraid to put my face in the water.”

I told myself, “This counts as trying something new.” I also told myself, “There’s nothing to be afraid of; you are in complete control, and if you get too freaked out, all you have to do is stop.” Nonetheless, I stood there over the sink for a good 5 minutes before I got up the nerve to give it a try. Let me tell you: the sensation of water going through my sinuses and over my septum was a confusing combination of  “um, this really shouldn’t be happening” and “hey, that actually feels like it’s working” that left my primitive brain ping-ponging between “keep going” and “holy crap you’re going to drown stop now!!!!!”

Clearly, I didn’t drown, since I’m here typing this. And darned if it didn’t help. I’m pretty sure I got better faster than I would have with a face full of gunk. So now I just have to overcome the fear of turning into a big hippie singing the praises of stuff like sinus rinsing.

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Spiritual autobiography, part 3

As I’ve noted in the past, I was raised Jewish — though a contradictory flavor of it, to be sure. We kept kosher at home, but not in restaurants. We went to temple on the High Holy Days, but not on weekends. It was made clear to me that I was going to have a Bat Mitzvah whether I wanted one or not; I didn’t, and had to be bribed with an electric typewriter.

(Yes, I sold my soul for a Smith-Corona — though I suspect this says less about the ethical flexibility of a preteen than the undeniable truth that I was doomed to writerdom from an early age.)

I was well into adulthood before I stopped feeling like I had to defend my decision to say Goodbye To All That. I once even got into a screaming fight with a dear friend who, out of heartfelt fondness for a very liberal version of Judaism, told me I had no right to forsake the faith of my forebears until I had sampled every current variety of it and judged them all a bad fit for me. To be fair, we’d been drinking, and each of us said things we regretted. Nonetheless, it ended up being a productive argument for me, because it clarified my realization that I had drifted away from even a mushy nondenominational religiosity into hardcore agnosticism.

Today I finally managed to articulate the reason — well, one reason; there are several — why my ancestral faith never felt like a good fit. Ironically, I found it in an article in a Jewish publication. (Full disclosure: the spouse of someone I know is quoted in this article, and a friend is actually a columnist for the publication, although neither of these facts is terribly relevant.)

In a nutshell, the article explores the discomfort the Modern Orthodox writer feels at going to yoga class, because despite her enjoyment of the exercise, she feels the chanting and bowing make yoga a religion, and she believes that even if it isn’t, it looks like one. And the tenets of Judaism as she observes them require her to avoid not just committing a sin, but avoiding even the appearance of committing a sin.

In other words, even if you have no ill intent, it’s not just what you do — it’s what other people think about what you do. One must be beyond reproach. At all times.

Granted, a more liberal rabbi says later in the article that what matters is intent. But it nailed the pointed problem of my youth: I was taught, in no uncertain terms, that if someone else thinks you’re misbehaving, you are misbehaving, or might as well be — and that the appearance was every bit as important, and maybe more so, than the substance.  And that, of course, can be perverted in a multitude of ways.

In an ideal world, being concerned about the judgment of others makes you live a good, ethical life, which is then reflected in your actions. But toss in a dash of narcissism or some other common craziness, and you end up with a thought process that goes something like this: “We can do whatever we want, as long as the actions that are visible to other people make us appear to be good and ethical. In fact, if enough other people perceive us to be good and ethical, we’ll believe it of ourselves, even if our actions behind closed doors are anything but — because if enough other people see and say it, it must be true. And therefore what we’re doing out of the public eye is by definition acceptable, because how could people who are so widely acclaimed as good and ethical do wrong?”

Or, more succinctly, “If we look good, we are good.”

In the end, scary as it is to discuss, I’ve chosen a path that involves living in congruence with what I feel is right, regardless of what other people think. Call it moral relativism, but I continue to believe that spending my time worrying about how I appear to other people is not righteousness, but a fast track to anxiety, neurotic perfectionism, and the sense that every bar I hurdle only leads to a higher bar in an unending quest for unachievable flawlessness.

It may not look good. But it’s good for me.

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Active inaction

Don’t just do something, sit there! – Anonymous

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt obligated to jump in to complicated situations and try to simplify them. It’s not a matter of hubris; I don’t feel like I can solve problems any better than anyone else. It’s more of a fear-driven compulsion. The thought process goes something like this:

Something is amiss!
If no one does anything, something bad will happen!
No one else is doing anything!
Oh no, it’s up to me!
If I can’t prevent something bad from happening, the disaster will be my fault!
(Cue massive anxiety attack with dollop of hopelessness on top. Aaaaand…scene.)

Sometimes, because I’m really good at untangling knots, I really do solve the problem, prevent bad things from happening, and enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done. But all too often, I end up diving into a problem that can’t be solved, even by someone who’s really good at solving problems. And then, when the inevitable disaster occurs, I can’t manage to shrug philosophically and say, okay, I did my best. Instead I spend hours, days, weeks replaying things in my head to try to figure out where I went wrong, while waiting apprehensively for someone to berate me for not doing better.

One of the things I’ve been assiduously working on, therefore, is the art of doing nothing. Of simply standing back, observing the situation, taking stock of my resources, and trying to figure out whether I actually have anything to contribute instead of plunging ahead in a desperate frenzy of “I don’t know what to do, but I have to do something.”

Sometimes you have to do nothing for an agonizingly long time before discerning not just what can be done and how to do it most effectively, or even whether you should be the one to do it, but whether there’s any point in doing anything in the first place. Those are the situations I struggle with the most: the ones where I feel trapped because the answers just aren’t clear, and I’m afraid that if I don’t do something, anything, even the wrong thing, I’ll be condemned for not having at least made an effort.

On the other hand, sometimes the situation forces you to do nothing very quickly. Some time ago, I was sitting in front of my favorite coffee shop when an elderly woman fell down the stairs on the bus and landed on the pavement right in front of me, hitting her head with a horrifying ripe-melon sound and lying there motionless. My first instinct was to jump up and run over to her, but in that millisecond of dismay, I managed to remember that I have only minimal first aid training and would probably do more harm than good. So instead I hollered into the coffee shop for someone to call 911 from a landline. And fortuitously, a nurse was nearby and ran over to take charge until the paramedics arrived.

The thing I’m starting to realize is that my instincts are every bit as good as my intentions. When things don’t go according to (my) plan, it’s rarely because I did something horribly wrong. I just lose sight of the fact that doing everything right improves the odds of a good outcome, but doesn’t guarantee one. Sometimes you get the same results no matter what you do.

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