Although it was over five decades ago, I still remember a time when I was fearless. It was when I was a teenager. Being fearless as a teenager is dangerous.
My first car was a Volkwagen, a red beetle with a 1500 cc motor, which was an upgrade from the 1300 model. The speedometer went up to ninety miles per hour. Twice I buried the needle by exceeding that speed which could only be achieved going down a long hill.
From Truro, Nova Scotia to Brule beach is 35 miles and I was able to drive it in 33 minutes. That does not sound impressive but it was a winding, hilly road. There was one long downhill stretch where I could bury the needle in my VW. One time a friend, Bill Rankin, (Rank William, where are you now?) was with me and on that long downhill stretch of road he got down on the floor and prayed. I laughed at him. I had no fear.
I remember another time when I was driving at night from Truro to Cole Harbour to see my girlfriend. I pulled out to pass another car but when I was almost by the driver stepped on the gas. Some people did not like being passed by a little bug. I also stepped on the gas and we continued side by side as we approached a hill. Not wanting to give in, I turned off my headlights to check for a reflection of headlights from oncoming traffic, on the other side of the hill, on the telephone and electricity wires. We crested the hill together with me in the wrong lane. I had no fear.
Many years later I learned that the brain of a teenager is not yet fully developed. When that is combined with a lack of life experience, the results can be tragic. I was lucky and for that I am grateful to this day.
On December 1, 1969 I left Nova Scotia and drove across Canada in my VW. My mother feared for my safety and asked me to wait until spring. But I was determined and there were several factors that added urgency to my decision. Again I was very lucky and had almost perfect weather during the whole trip which took me only a week. There were long stretches of highway with very light traffic and no houses to be seen. Years later living in Edmonton and Calgary I experienced how fierce a prairie blizzard could be. But in 1969 I had no fear.
In my twenties I felt fear, a fear I welcomed. I thought it was a healthy fear of God. At that time I was in a church which had ministers that could deliver powerful sermons. But at midlife I realized that that church was really a benign cult and fear was merely an instrument used to control people.
While exiting the cult I had an experience that was closer to terror than fear. It happened in the middle of the night. I was awake, wrestling with my cognitive dissonance as my entire belief system was crumbling. I realized for the first time that there may be no God and that I would probably not inherit eternal life. I would die, cease to exist, gone forever.
Over time that terror dissipated and acceptance crept in. Today I feel no fear of death, calmly accepting reality. But I have a comforting story that I tell myself, that I will live as long as my mother who has just had her 101st birthday. My death is still far away. Do I have a healthy acceptance of death or am I deluded by the story in my head?
For much of my adult life I had a fear that I was not good enough, particularly that I was not good enough to please my father. I was able to keep that fear at a sufficient distance, allowing me to chart my own course. But that fear was often not too deep below the surface until it was finally conquered.
In my early fifties I was having a prolonged, difficult time. For the first time in my life I needed professional help in order to cope. I started to see a psychologist at a mental health outpatient clinic. In one session she bluntly told me that I had an unhealthy fear of being alone. That startled me at the time but the thought stayed in my mind. Years later I wrote the following words to Pat in an unpublished post for my website.
…I have also read about the importance of being aware of and facing our fears so I thought about my fear of being alone in light of my marriage to you.
Early in January, 2017, something happened that I have not yet shared with you. One morning I woke up and knew I was no longer afraid of being alone. I assume that this thought resulted from the activity of my unconscious mind at work while I was asleep.
Please do not misunderstand. This does not mean that I want to be alone. But it does mean that the unhealthy glue of the fear of being alone is no longer a factor in my marriage or in my life. It is difficult to put into words the magnitude of this invisible change but it does feel very liberating.
I think that for most of my life I had a healthy desire to learn, to know. Beginning in my teenage years, I have always loved browsing in bookstores. I have always been an avid reader and since retiring I have read about one hundred books. But I think there was also an unhealthy fear lurking close by, a fear of not being respected because of not knowing enough. In recent years Buddhism has taught me that my need to know will never be satisfied. And very recently I have felt a profound shift deep inside me sparked by something I read in Collective Presencing by Ria Baeck.
One piece of embodying this awareness came with my own realisation at one point “that there is nothing important any more that I can source on my own. Sourcing needs to happen in and for the collective. My development on my own has reached its limits. The collective now provides the learning edge.”
The shift I feel is that my learning from books has reached a limit and that I must now also learn from others with whom I am in right relationship.
In early 2020 the world was hit with the coronavirus crisis. I am very aware of the misery this highly infectious disease brings. But I do not fear it. I am not a particularly brave person. Mostly I am merely fortunate that the crisis has not yet touched me or those close to me. If I were not retired and had lost my job, I would probably fear greatly for my future.
However, while I am not optimistic about the future all on earth face, I feel no fear. Not yet. That may come, but I hope not.