Posts tagged fear

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about fear and society. Fear has society considering mandatory bar-coding at birth. Fear has society believing a comfortable, natural, and drug-free child birth is not possible. Fear has society questioning our ability to make our own responsible decisions in life.

We make rash decisions because of fear. We make wrong decisions because of fear. We lose our freedom because of fear.

I’m reminded of a few months ago after I left NYC and moved back to rural Pennsylvania. The transition was not super easy, as I had kind of expected, and we were financially stressed, as most people are these days.

I started doing some serious soul-searching and expressed some of my emotions to a dear friend. He had also been doing some soul-searching over the past year, so I knew he could somewhat understand where I was coming from.

He then paraphrased a quote by Saint Barsanuphius, “Know, my brother, that every thought which is not preceded by the calmness of humility does not come from God, but clearly from the left side.”

From that, I understood that I should pay closer attention to my thoughts and emotions. If they bring me peace, then I should accept and follow them. If they bring me fear, then I should ignore and run far away from them.

Last week was the first time that I can remember, maybe even ever, that I felt completely at peace with myself. I have always felt guilty for not doing enough, not working hard enough, letting the pressures of society bring me down.

I actually felt inspired to sit at the piano and just play. That may sound bizarre since I am a singer-songwriter whose main instrument is piano, but it honestly has been over 8 years since I played the piano just for fun. Not to practice. Not to write. But to enjoy. And it felt so good.

Why would I deprive myself of such feelings? What have I been so scared of? Failure? Judgment? Mediocrity?

I think I finally just gave in and let the fear go. I wanted to enjoy the present moment for all that it was, good, bad, or just okay. “Let go, and let God”, right? “Everything happens for a reason”, right?

These beautiful, yet simple sayings, but who actually follows them? Now on, when fear enters my mind, I want to remind myself to fear not Earthly matters. I know of nothing good that has ever come from fear. I just want to enjoy life with all it’s ups and downs and knowns and unknowns, with true gratitude.