Fear is the mind killer

We all have a friend, or are actually one of those people, who have some dream, goal, or ideal that we stake our identity on but never seem to actually deliver. Perhaps it is the trip to Italy that you have always dreamed and talked endlessly about. You know every nook and cranny and local shop in this cute town and have the picture perfect itinerary in your head, but have never gone. Or maybe it is a book that you plan to sit down and write once the right environment comes along, preferably a cabin in the woods away from everything. Another common one is a desire to pick up a new skill or learn a subject. You haphazardly consume countless tutorials or the theory and gain a sense of confidence in your abilities and hope to feel comfortable enough to do it ourselves.

One way or another, for some reason, our circumstances never quite align with our expectation.

Take me for example. I pride myself on being a reader and a journaler in a world filled with distractions, but I can count on my hands the number of times I have read or scribbled some thoughts on paper in the few months. It’s not that I don’t want to read or write more. If I could manage to peel myself from my compulsive habits with technology, maybe I would. Since I last actively posted 2-3 years ago, I have been compiling a list of ideas to write about but not written a single one since. I have told myself that “today is the day”. We all know how that went.

The point is, the world is filled with people with dreams and goals and very few people who can talk the talk and do the walk. Or even more admirably, those who can do the walk without needing to gab about it (something I personally strive to better at). These empty personal commitments we make to ourselves are a lot like fusion energy – they will perpetually remain fifty years away from feasibility.

We fall in love with ideas, personalities, and/or ways of life but don’t have the desire to back up our words. Laziness is a significant factor. So is fear. Fear can manifests itself in devious ways. From my personal experience, it has manifested itself as a full-time exploration of the limitless possibilities available to me. For as long as I can remember, I have loved day-dreaming about all the things that could be. I could be a meteorologist, a mathematician, a computer programmer, a professor, a pro-gamer, and so on. I have simultaneously chased so many pursuits, gotten very good at them, but am not extraordinary in anything.

“Jack of all trades” don’t arise from someone naturally being good at so many things. What I believe to be more likely is it comes from an aptitude for getting good at getting good. This is a problem for someone like me who is genuinely curious about most things. It is very easy to get swept away in the novelty of chasing endless rabbit holes and losing sight of the things I should and want to actively prioritize more. Living in the world of possibilities is, at worst, an insidious procrastination mechanism from dealing with fear. Because when we finally decide to take on the thing we have always said we are going to do, we become extremely vulnerable. Uncertainty and doubt comes crashing like a hundred foot wave. When shit hits the fan, my first instinct would have been to jump ship and return to shore where I’m comfortable in: possibility rather than commitment. Because commitment means the potential for failure. This pattern of thinking is something that has taken me a long time to break. It has been the source of so much tension, blocked creativity, and unproductive hours.

Making the commitment to move thought into reality is a direct confrontation with our psyche, and with it our most powerful insecurities. To be an effective creative or “doer”, we have to understand ourselves at a more fundamental level than surface level thinking. We have to maintain a firm tether to our actual reality instead of our perceived reality. We must go beyond surface level thinking and know ourselves: our thought patterns, our tendencies, our priorities and motivations. To do the novel, we must let go and forgive our mistakes and our fears. If we fear, we will never live up to what we hope to accomplish.

I will leave this post one of my all-time favorite quotes, which is from the Dune series:

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune