Here’s what I see:
I see a nation panicking.
I see grief, and desperation,
Loneliness, and boredom.
But most of all, I see fear.
And if you looked closer, down far beneath the surface, deep
within the darkest places within, you will see it to.
It is the source.
This darkness that is all consuming.
It gives birth to the irrational. It is the mother of those irrational
obsessions you are now feeling. It is
responsible for the overwhelming desire you have to engage in conversations and
judgmental behaviors you would never have dreamed of before.
It is easy to shrug it off, to not identify it for what it
is.
It is so much easier to place the blame on something else,
someone else.
You will tear through all the sources, read every scrap of
information you can find, watch all the videos and television announcements to
find some glimmer of explanation. Some validation for the thoughts that are
consuming your mind.
You want to be informed.
You believe information is rational and the rational is what you
crave. Anything but the unknown that you
are faced with. Anything but the fear.
But still you refuse to face it.
You push it down, name it something else. Numb the senses
with television and movies. Read books, play video games, eat anything you can
get your hands on. Anything but recognize
and admit what it truly is that is consuming you.
Fear.
How can you be afraid?
What is there to be afraid of?
There is nothing to fear so you name it something else.
You repeat the same routine. Place blame elsewhere. You deny
the obvious.
We are trained from childhood to not be afraid. That to be
afraid, you are a coward, and nobody wants to be a coward. We push it back. We create self-defense mechanisms.
We surround ourselves with a glass shield built from lies.
But the pressure can become too much if it is left
unattended.
And glass shatters so easily when the right pressure is
applied.
What if I were to tell you that it is ok to be afraid?
I am not a psychiatrist.
Not even a psychologist.
Yes, I was a certified credit counselor too many years ago, but even
that was merely a glorified budget counselor for debt consolidation and public
assistance. I’m not preaching to you from
a pulpit, and I certainly am the last person that would tell you that I have everything
under control.
Because I don’t.
But I do have some advice based on my personal experience
with fear, anxiety, and depression. And if you’re still reading this, I hope
that maybe, what I went through, can offer a small margin of hope for you.
Right now, we are facing something unprecedented within our
lifetimes. The world is struggling with
the fear of contagion. We’ve all seen
the news, read the reports, watched as nations struggled to contain something
invisible. We read headlines and hear
reports about the “front lines” as though this were something tangible and we
were at war. In war we have an enemy
that we can see. One that we can touch. One that we can destroy.
But this isn’t tangible.
There is no enemy that we can see and touch and
destroy. Only pictures under a
microscope blown into life size proportions by artists trying to place a face
on a virus. Something microscopic. Something only read about in novels and watched
in horror movies over the years.
If only it were transforming people into monsters. Monsters you can see. Monsters you can destroy.
But this…you cannot see.
And there is no weapon other than your immune system and, as it turns
out, not all of us are that immune.
So we turn it into something tangible. We place our fear on
something else, someone else. We point
our fingers at our neighbors and our friends. We scold others from the safety
of our couches as we post across social media. We need someone to blame because
everything that we are doing isn’t destroying it. It’s merely slowing it down. After all, you’ve listened to the experts.
You’ve played by the rules and obeyed all the commands. You’ve tuned in daily and have tried to keep up
with the new policies and guidelines that change every hour. You haven’t done anything wrong. So why hasn’t
it stopped?
And the only explanation you can find is simple: if you have
followed the rules and are still losing the game, then it must be someone
else. And the fear turns into anger and
the combination becomes ugly as the paranoia begins. You over rationalize. You try to be helpful by pointing out bad
behavior. You don’t see anything wrong
with it because after all, if someone else takes a misstep, it could be deadly
and you feel it is your responsibility to help them see the error of their ways
and lead them back onto the correct path.
And the paranoia grows.
It feeds on the fear and stokes the flames for anger and now you just
want to lash out. Those around you are
getting sick and you have to blame even more people. Why should it stop at your neighbor and
friends? Why not blame your employer,
the managers that are desperately trying to keep up with the new guidelines,
the companies that are struggling to keep their employees healthy and sane, and
the finger pointing continues on up the food chain because someone needs to be
held responsible. Somebody needs to shoulder
the weight of the fear that lives inside.
I am not here to talk politics. I am not here to point fingers. I am merely trying to illustrate how it all
begins and how easily it can spiral.
How powerful fear is.
Now here’s the truth about fear:
It isn’t all dark.
It isn’t all consuming.
It can be controlled.
And it can be turned into something useful.
But none of that is possible if you continue to hide from it
and not call it what it is.
When you stop for a minute, allow just one moment to sit with
it and let it wash over you, it will push you to your limit and you will feel as though
it will break you. You will feel the
darkness that I spoke about and touch upon the depression that has been lurking. You will feel as though you cannot endure it
and want to run away from it. How can
something so painful, so raw be useful?
How can something so dark be turned into something light?
We have all heard tales of bravery. Those spoken of on the battlefields and
closer to home by first responders. We
watch the movies, read the stories but never think that it is anything we could
ever do. Those instances are all quantified
examples of true bravery facing down an understandable and tangible fear. Our
fear is baseless.
So here is my advice, spoken from someone who has developed
more phobias over the unemployment years than I know how to count. I have sat with my fear long enough that I
should be declaring it on my taxes as a dependent. But I have come to name it for what it
is. I recognize it when it rears its
head. I acknowledge its presence and I
have learned from it.
Because fear is a teacher.
It illuminates the parts within us that we try to hide from. It is a reminder of a weakness that we cannot
face. And this one, this experience that
we are all going through, we cannot control.
And losing control is the biggest fear we all ignore.
It took me a long time to accept that what was occurring to
me with the layoffs was not something I could control. It wasn’t my behavior. It wasn’t a dark cloud. It had nothing to do with the decisions I
made in my life. It just…was.
Accepting that there are moments in life that you have no
control over is one of the hardest lessons I had to learn, and I see many of
you struggling through the same internal battle. But there are pieces of this that you can
control. You can control your reaction to it.
You can control how you treat others and how you treat yourself.
Now, before you begin to lecture me on how this current
situation has no parallels to any of the ones I mentioned, let me remind you
that fear is not rational. And this current situation we are all facing is
multi-faceted. I’m not an idiot. And I’m not downplaying anyone’s reaction. I’m
merely trying to let you know that what you are feeling is valid. And even though you cannot control what is
going on around you, you can control how you react to it. You don’t have to be controlled by your
fear. You can learn from it, and use it
to do something good.
