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.
- Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
God created Missouri to train the faithful.
- Mid Western Fremen Proverb
I have learned a lesson in the last few weeks. A lesson that has been working its way through my conscious mind for the last couple of months.
A few months ago, I took advantage of money from my employer and got a certification I've long wanted and talked about getting. I made every excuse to not get it. The excuses cleared, the money was there and once I decided to do it, the certification came easy. I already had the knowledge, I just had to prove it and pay for it.
The last couple of weeks, I've been studying a computer programming language; Java. For a couple of years, decades depending on what you consider a "language", I've been wanting to learn to code. I always got bored and stopped. No, not bored - afraid. I said I was bored. I made myself think I was bored. I blamed the fact that I'm all about instant gratification and that the learning wasn't coming fast enough. But, the truth was, I was afraid. Afraid I couldn't do it. Afraid I would fail. In the last couple of weeks, I have picked up a lot of Java. I have written working, clean, functional, useful code. I've written fun code. Once I decided to do it, once I gave myself permission to suck, it came fairly quickly. And, honestly, it's been fun. I've dived in and really explored. I've only scratched the surface but I want to learn more. I want to put "Java Developer" and "Test Automation Engineer" on my resume.
Why am I writing about this on my diet blog? I want to talk about The Fear. I literally want to confront my fear of The Fear. I'm not a confrontational guy. Never have been. I'm most likely to just walk away than fight. If I'm yelling at you, it's because I feel cornered and don't see a way out. I'm really good at walking away, figuratively and literally.
Confronting The Fear is hard for me. But, I need to do it.
I don't think I ever learned how to fail. I'm not blaming anyone for that, who teaches their kids how to fail? There are no classes, no Learn to Fail 101. But, I think a lot of people learn to fail naturally by doing stuff, failing, surviving and doing it again. I never did anything. I have no real accomplishments. I barely tried in school, barely passed because people thought I had potential and I had natural brain power, used or not. I didn't get a degree because I didn't ... hell, I don't even know why. I know now that four years is not an eternity and while my generation might be the last that having a degree means something, it really would have served me. My work history is fraught with unemployment and mediocrity at best because I didn't have any proof I was useful at anything because I never did anything but scrape by.
It goes beyond that. I never figured out what I want, who I wanted to be. The few times I tried to figure that out, The Fear kicked my ass. As a youngster, I wanted to be an Astronaut. My plan was heavy on STEM in school, let the Navy pay for college, with even more STEM. NASA is a civilian agency, but most of the Shuttle pilots and previous program crews were ex-military with a lot of emphasis on carrier landings, so I wanted to be Naval Aviator. The rest would be easy enough, right? Okay, I know I had way too much Star Wars and Top Gun in my skull, but it wasn't a bad plan. The only problem was I sucked at Math and Science - because I really didn't apply myself. Why? Fear of failure? Likely. Regardless, when the Navy told me that 6'2" and 230 pounds was way too big to be a fighter jock, I was angry, but I had a way out. I could let the dream die and it wasn't my fault - look at how unfairly life had treated me! There were other options, I even knew about them. I said stuff like "Mission Specialists are just cargo." What a jackass! If I had buckled down and done the homework, maybe I could have gotten somewhere. Certainly further than I got.
A school guidance counselor turned me on to the idea of being an archaeologist. I had seen Indiana Jones, I was hip. Off to college I went, with visions of digs in my future. A professor says "the science only has about thirty years left" - The Fear says "See? Loser!" I flounder and flunk out. The professor was wrong, by the way. But, I had my out. I didn't have a chance to fail if I didn't try. Somehow my brain, that thought four years was an eternity, also thought that a career that might extend to 2015 or 2020 was unsustainable. See? Bad at math!
I told myself around 1999 that by the time I was 35, I would be a freelance writer. Yeah! As if! I barely write in this blog! I've always loved the idea of learning to play drums. I currently have bongos in the back of my car. Bought those in 2008. Do I know how to play them? Nope. I'm sure by now you see the pattern.
The Fear has ruled my life. I've allowed that to happen.
My health has followed the same pattern. My family is obese and has heart issues, they all die relatively young, why even try to be healthy? Sports are hard, TV is easy. The gym is hard, sleeping is easy. Some of this just sounds like laziness, but I'm starting to see that laziness is a great disguise for The Fear. I was even able to hide it from myself, and mentally kick myself for being a lazy loser in the process.
I've previously talked about giving myself permission to suck. But, this is going deeper. I have to give myself permission to TRY. To TRY AGAIN. Maybe it's not permission, maybe it's kick-myself-in-the-ass to TRY. I dunno. This is all new. I'm still mulling it around. Success of any kind is kinda new to me.
Why didn't I know these things at 17? At 20? Would I have been smart enough to listen?
