There was a time some years ago when I had a temporary job which ended, and I was then looking for new employment. A former co-worker know of a potential opening, and gave me the phone number of a woman who worked at a “virtual company” (a cute buzzword of the time, where all employees worked from their respective homes). I was to call her and we could then talk and see if there was any further interest.
I called her, and after a few minutes, she thought it would be a good idea to meet. She asked me “Would you like to meet for dinner or tea?”
At that moment, and at that very second, before I could answer, before I could even think, I knew everything I needed to know about myself. I knew how I would answer and why.
What I Knew
I knew that my entire life had been determined by, and ruled by one thing, and one thing only: fear.
It was through the lens of fear that I lived and through the lens of fear that I saw everything that I saw, and through fear how I approached everything, how I spoke, and how I thought, and how I decided on what to do in my life, and then how I would answer the question.
“Tea,” I said.
I had given that answer because I was afraid, afraid of the unknown of a potential business dinner. Being fearful of a business dinner with an unknown person, I opted for the safer choice, the choice that fear impelled me to say.
And this so startled me, this seeing into my own behavior, that I had seen my own workings, the mechanics of my behavior and their origin, that I was possessed by it, I was dependent on it for my personal and emotional survival… and I then also realized that I needed to own it and break free of it at the same time.
(We later met for tea. She was a normal person like myself, not a frightening high-powered business person. And I didn’t get hired.)
What I Saw
But the obsession with the fear that I had seen, the seeing of how I behaved and the why of how I behaved… it all totally enveloped me. I saw myself as fear, and I wanted to break it.
So I sat and thought. What to do? What to do meant how could I attack this fear, how could I bring it to heel, how could I confront it?
I decided that I knew what I needed to do. I need to do what I was afraid of.
So I thought: What is the most fearful thing to me in the world?
The most fearful thing to me in the world, at that time, was to get married. I had never wanted to marry. When I was a very young child, young and playing on the carpet, even a toddler, I had realized and decided that marriage was not for me. I looked at my parents, and said to myself: if this is marriage, I don’t want anything to do with it.
So, having no one at hand at the time to potentially marry, I continued on my quest.
What is the second most fearful thing to me in the world?
The second most fearful thing, I decided, was to jump out of airplanes.
So I looked in the yellow pages for skydiving. And off I went.
The first skydive is done buckled to an instructor. But subsequently, to jump independently, one takes a class. So I took the class and over the next few weeks I jumped solo several times.
From that point, I came to understand how I can approach the world in another way. Whenever I hesitated, I thought to myself… Wait a minute! I jumped out of airplanes! How bad can this new thing be compared to jumping out of airplanes!?
It did help me. But please don’t misunderstand: I am not recommending skydiving for anyone.
What I am saying is that somehow, some way, at that critical moment of that original phone call, without even realizing it I had realized something for and about myself. And from that to the need to change. Change requires the realization of what is, and the realization of what needs to change even without necessarily understanding it fully.
And that the future is unknown. No one knows where things will lead.
A few months after making those skydiving jumps, I was in a job interview. For better or for worse, it was a group interview: me facing a group of employees all asking me questions. I was asked what I did for fun. I said I jumped out of airplanes. I was hired.
That hiring lead to a twenty-five year career in a field I had previously had difficulty getting hired in. (BTW, I eventually overcame the fear of marriage. I got married and still am.)
How did you overcome fear?
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