Latin Latin Latin

by Ben

Notes Leading Up To The Fear Assignment

What is fear?

Fear is how we react when something we truly value is, or appears to be, threatened.  Fear can look very different case-to-case, but it is always an outworking of clinging tighter to whatever we feel is threatened.

What does fear keep you from experiencing?

When fear is misplaced, it keeps me from joy.  Because fear is applied to things I value, it can keep me from approaching them rightly.  For example, I default to being very afraid of failure, which comes from valuing success so much that I can’t bear to not have it.  So, let’s say there’s a job that I would LOVE, but it seems like I’m not quite qualified for it.  Fear would keep me from even applying for it, because there’s a threat of failure, even if I know in my head that there’s also a chance of success.  Creatively, it might keep me from trying to create something if I feel like there’s a threat that I’m not skilled enough to pull it off.  It would keep me from the inevitable growth the experience would cause, even if it didn’t turn out exactly like I wanted.

What is the use of fear?

Fear tells me what I really value deep down in my inner self.  When I know this, I can look at those fears objectively and see which ones are unreasonable and controlling me in a way that keeps me from good things.

The experiment.

One thing that fear has kept me from is writing my own songs.  I’ve always wanted to, but I’ve never been able to write lyrics that I think are any good.  Perhaps more to the point, I’ve never been able to write lyrics that I think anyone else would think are any good.  I know in my head that it’s normal to write a bunch of crappy stuff before I write anything that is up to my standards of good writing, but my fearful reaction that I’d be rejected and unapproved has always won out.  So, I’m going to write a song and perform it, and see if things really turn out as terrible as my fearfulness would imply.