Facing Fear

Being open and honest is dangerous. We have good reason to be afraid. The threats are real, they are many, and we need to learn how to deal with them.

In response to last week’s “No Secrets to Conceal,” one reader commented:

It’s a difficult world these days.  It’s true that many of us don’t trust very many people.  I know that the last time I entrusted someone with some information I now wish I hadn’t, I noticed how that person did share my information with others without my permission and even retold to me my information in a taunting manner as well as rewriting my information in the process so that it was even more lascivious than the original true version.  Her memory had contrived a gossip version of my life.  So, it’s small wonder that people don’t trust people.  

Does that sound familiar to you? It does to me.

That reader also said:

I also notice that once you tell people something intimate about yourself, it puts you in a lower position.  I think it’s because we are like pack animals.  When a dog is top dog, the dog never looks at the other dogs.  He/she looks away.  That’s how it is for people too in a way.  If you reveal too much of yourself, people think of you as weaker.  I know it’s shitty; but I think it’s hard for us to learn to trust each other. 

I also find a lot of truth in that statement, though human beings also hold innate tendencies toward altruism and cooperation.

The same reader reported on an instance when she was in great need, asked for assistance, and found that “it seemed like that took me down a few pegs.  It wasn’t until I let everyone know that I was better … that everyone seemed to respond to me better. Sometimes, it’s risky to let people know too much.  They like you better when you have on your best face.”

That well-put insight, “They like you better when you have on your best face,” was new to me and instantly rang true. We wear got-it-together masks, relate to others who do the same, and end up in a make-believe world.

Often we hold back because we’re afraid the other will end the relationship. Men in particular are prone to drop the woman once the “conquest” is complete. But women can do the same when the initial glow of the chase has worn off.

The Sufi poet, Rumi, wrote, “The rose’s rarest essence lives in the thorn.” On the Internet, I found the following analysis of that line:

All roses grow thorns naturally, it is truly a hallmark of the rose, but it is so infrequently observed or appreciated. To ignore such a feature, though, is to deny a part of what makes the rose what it is. It is a fragile beauty that has one line of defense, to bite those that would touch it. Without this key trait, I doubt it would have survived long. Beauty attracts admirers, and admirers will unwittingly harm such a plant in the process of taking it for themselves. The thorns prevent the admirers from harming the rose bush in their ignorance. Instead, it teaches the admirers to appreciate the rose from a distance.

It’s no easy task to be close from a distance. Smothering one another in mutual, possessive dependency is a real risk. To prevent this scenario, we often try to push others away by extending our thorns. That way we avoid the risk of getting sucked into a downward spiral of oppressive neediness.  .

Waiting for the ideal relationship, whether friend or lover, we judge others and ourselves harshly, put up a false front, and withdraw behind our thorns. We make the perfect the enemy of the good and end up alone, or almost alone. We shut down and if we aren’t careful, we freeze up inside.

But if we are rooted in the Ground of Being and maintain enough distance, without trying to “take” the rose for ourselves, we can avoid being devastated when others prick us with their thorns. We can escape to “Desolation Row,”  be open and vulnerable, not worry too much about what others think of us, admit to ourselves when we are hurt, fully experience that pain for what it is, and let it go. After all, what’s a little prick? Then we can look for close friends who don’t look down on us when we reveal ourselves.

Growing up, I often heard, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” In The Phrase Finder, Gary Martin reports, “The earliest citation of [that saying] that I can find is from an American periodical with a largely black audience, The Christian Recorder, in March 1862.” There it is referred to as an “old adage,” which suggests that it had been in circulation for some time.

One wonders if children today grow up hearing that or some similar aphorism. With its title, a recent Psychology Today article, “Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones . . . But Words Will Cut Me Deeply”  seems to reflect today’s spirit.

Language matters. One often hears, “When you said that, you hurt my feelings.” Or, “I’m sorry I hurt you.” I speak and think that way myself at times.

But it seems more accurate to say, “When you did that, I felt disappointed,” or, “You did not hurt me. My ego did.” The greatest danger is internal: our own ego and the damage it inflicts. By inflating the importance of our own individual concerns and blaming others for our distress, we evade our own responsibility and undermine the power of our true self to find peace and understanding.

Our true self is compassionate, knows that others do what they do for understandable reasons, and accepts their decision to do what is best for them. But our ego wants what it wants and declines to try to understand the other.

Once we move beyond our fear, we can tap our innate desire to learn. As Shryl McCormick states in her latest Fearless Conversations newsletter: "Curiosity is the desire to know; that desire leads us to inquire. Inquiry does not always come naturally to us, especially because it has an almost opposing energy to judgment [NOTE: I would say 'being judgmental.'].  Inquiry is a practice; it takes intention…."

To blame the other for our emotional pain is not accurate. The way we think influences what we feel. And we have great influence over how we think.

As Seb Paquet told me, “Progression towards intimacy is fascinating. It feels so dangerous before you go there. Maybe because it is?” One reason we end up being hurt is that we lapse into wishful thinking, relating to an illusion rather the real person in front of us, and then suffer when reality breaks in. As Zora Heale Hurston wrote in her great novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God:

Janie stood where he left her for unmeasured time and thought. She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered. But looking at it she saw that it was never the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just something she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over.

When we fail to see others for who they really are and reality finally crumbles our fantasies about the future, is it fair to blame the other for our pain? Why not pay attention to and accept Reality in the first place? If we do, what is there to be afraid of?

It may be no coincidence that the sticks-and-stones aphorism became embedded in African-American communities during slavery, when the difference between external and internalized oppression was crystal clear.  As I discussed in “Thurman, King, and Deep Nonviolence,” the great African-American theologian, Howard Thurman, addressed how to deal with fear and dishonesty in Jesus and the Disinherited, which is basically a self-help manual (that greatly influenced Dr. King).

Fear, he said, can be “a climate closing in… like the fog in San Francisco…  nowhere in particular yet everywhere… a mood which one carries around…. The result is the dodging of all encounters…. This fear which served originally as a safety device…becomes death for the self.”

Thurman eloquently described how allowing oneself to be victimized can be debilitating. He said that Jesus of Nazereth

recognized with authentic realism that anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny. If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under his control…

According to Thurman, fear often “arises out of the sense of isolation and helplessness…. [I]t is not the fear of death that is most often at work; it is the deep humiliation arising from dying without benefit or purpose.”

Thurman also addressed the connection between fear and dishonesty, when he wrote:

Deception is perhaps the oldest of all the techniques by which the weak have protected themselves. The weak have survived by fooling the strong…. [But] the penalty of deception is to become a deception…. Life is only a tale told by a fool, having no meaning because deception has wiped out all moral distinctions [emphasis added].” 

As a result, life is cheapened by an “artificial and exaggerated emphasis upon not being killed [or, we can add here, not feeling hurt].”

Jesus responded by preaching, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow” in order to foster a “sense of belonging, of counting” that establishes “the ground of personal dignity, so that a profound sense of personal worth could absorb the fear reaction [emphasis added].…. He senses the confirmation of his roots, and even death becomes a little thing.”

If one humbly sees oneself as a child of God, Thurman wrote, “He is in a position to appraise his own intrinsic powers, gifts, talents, and abilities.” Then he can experience

a profound faith in life that nothing can destroy…. It is true that a man cannot be serene unless he possesses something about which to be serene…. Here are the faith and the awareness that overcome fear and transform it into the power to strive, to achieve, and not to yield.

Thurman envisions instead “a complete and devastating sincerity” as Gandhi recommended in a letter to Muriel Lester where he stated, “Speak the truth, without fear and without exception,… You are in God’s work, so you need not fear man’s scorn.” Inspired by Gandhi, Thurman wrote:

Be simply, directly truthful, whatever may be the cost in life, limb, or security. For the individual who accepts this, there may be quick and speedy judgment with attendant loss. But if the number increases and the movement spreads, the vindication of the truth would follow in the wake. There must always be the confidence that the effect of truthfulness can be realized in the mind of the oppressor as well as the oppressed.

We can relate as one human being to another. “A man is a man, nor more, no less,” Thurman insisted. “The awareness of this fact marks the supreme moment of human dignity.”

As Thurman concluded:

Jesus… assured us that "the Kingdom of Heaven is within." He announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them….

He projected a dream, the logic of which would give to all the needful security…. The basic principles of his way of life cut straight through to the despair of his fellows and found it groundless. By inference, he says, “You must abandon your fear of each other and fear only God.  You must not indulge in any deception and dishonesty, even to save your lives….”  

Those are ideals. Occasional exceptions, it seems to me, are inevitable (and Thurman, I believe, acknowledged it elsewhere). In some situations, deception is a practical necessity. But when we do deceive, we can do so consciously, after carefully considering the alternatives. And we can always aim to see others and ourselves clearly and move in the direction of increasing transparency, as we learn how to be more honest with compassion.

In the real world, people end up feeling disappointed, hurt, and angry. So we need to learn how to communicate compassionately when we are honest in order to minimize fear and pain. We shouldn’t just think, “That’s your problem.” And we need, for example, to take steps to reduce verbal abuse and bullying (which is often a way for bullies to feel better about themselves).

By accepting responsibility for our own feelings and learning how to acknowledge and let go of our pain when others’ actions prompt us to feel hurt, we can steadily reduce our fear of honest encounters. Then we can start being more honest ourselves, serve as examples for others, grow a movement based on fearless compassion, and cultivate a more open and transparent world.