Salubrious Life, a blog with several authors that covers healthy body, mind issues, has posted this about fear. It's from a wonderful book I read about three years ago called "The Life Of Pi", by Jann Martel. I think it is appropriate and timely and I am reprinting it here....
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Fear is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know it. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes to your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubts, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it and with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. You anxiety becomes dread.
Fear next turns fully into your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. You heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.
Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you’ve defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression has triumphed over you.
The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundations, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself up to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.
- Life of Pi, by Yann Martel (pg. 161)
Perhaps I should start writing about agoraphobia again...I had a blog, called Nervous, and decided that gosh darn it, I was simply not going to be agor any longer, and certainly wasn't going to define myself about it. I still deal with fear quite a bit, though. How true, that it is life's opponent. I saw the title of a new book, called 100 Places to Go Before You Die. Shit, I'll be glad when I can leave Austin. Stupid fear.
Posted by: Michelle | May 25, 2005 at 15:49