Fear

What we fear grows more complex each year, it seems.

Fears used to be more clear, more primal, more physical. Physical fear is simple. I am facing something that can do me physical harm. This triggers that famous fight or flight emotion. Our senses heighten. Things slow down. Decisions become instinctual. 

Modern living does not offer many of these experiences. But they are essential to human makeup, to God’s blueprint, to nature’s selection. Nowadays, we can stand at a stopwalk while cars — barreling death brigades — race just feet in front of us. We stand inches from snapped bone and torn sinew — on our phones, blissfully unaware of physical fear, the tool God gave us to zap into the present with electrifying clarity,

It is a tool, this fear. At least, it can be.

I’ve written on this blog at length about the nurturing properties of pickup basketball.

And I’m not referring to cardiovascular health. Playing basketball helps my mental health. I get the sort of release on the court I simply can’t get anywhere else. Physical needs amplified; mental burdens attenuated. Decisions come swiftly. To hesitate is to lose. This is a tap into the very basic human need to pay close attention to every physical movement in your environment, to prioritize each limb in a hierarchy of need.

We don’t feel this way often anymore. We feel it less and less. And our kids are facing less recess and more time sitting in front of a computer. Sport itself seems to be more and more associated with attributes society deems toxic. I’ve had trouble witnessing this — sports saved my life. When I was growing up, they were what really mattered to me, probably because they made me feel a certain way, a certain essentially human kind of way.

No, we don’t face those kinds of fears today. We stand at the stopwalk without any fear of crossing the street. The neon walker and blipping sound tells us that it is safe to cross. There is no instinct in use here. Might as well stare at our phones.

But there, on the street, phone in hand, what sort of fears are we facing?

It’s not as if the fear mechanism has, all of a sudden, switched off.

I was in an argument with someone I love about this recently, and that person’s opinion I respect, deeply. I don’t believe we are evolving as human beings. 

I see evolution as a scientific term that helps understand how God has manifested a dizzyingly expansive set of circumstances to bring about the human being. Darwin’s theory helped make sense of this process through natural selection. But his theory only explains how species came into being. It can’t be extended (as far as I understand it) to inter-species evolution. Homo Sapiens came about. And until we morph into a new species (Homo Spurious? LOL, just kidding) you cannot apply the laws of evolution to us. 

I regret to inform anyone reading this — and I welcome anyone who knows more about science to comment on this — but homo sapiens have not changed. We are the same as we were a quarter of a million years ago — that’s a rough estimate of when scientists claim our species evolved into existence.

Name me another species of — well, of anything — that has evolved out of itself and still retained its same taxonomy. Homo sapiens are homo sapiens, the way eptesicus fuscus is a big brown bat, nothing more and nothing less. That big brown bat might change its diet or its migratory pattern based on any number of factors. But those environmental factors can’t change its classification as a species. If the species changed, you’d know it by a new name. It is no longer eptesicus fuscus. And last I checked, we are still homo sapiens.

Yet we act like we are evolving. We act as if technology is making fundamental changes to our God given DNA. That’s not really how it works. 

So why do we view our more ancient heritage as primitive and primeval? That’s a good question. And I don’t have an easy answer. What I do know is that my students love reading Fools Crow by James Welch, the Native American. The book is, by far, the most challenging read of the year. It is, also, by far, a class favorite. The book is all about honor, murder, pride, sympathy, reinvention, games, war. It captures the culture of plains Indians in the 1950s — the people whom settlers exterminated for their reluctance to evolve.

I have to imagine, given my love for sport, I would have been pretty happy in humankind’s earlier iterations. I’ve always thrived in team settings. And I’m a people person, preferring to work with others directly, rather than with numbers or screens.

There is much to the human experience that is essential. Fear is essential. This means that we will feel fear whether or not those fears are physical, mental or existential. The conditions we live under will undoubtedly shape the type of fear we feel. But removing, say, the physical fear we feel cannot change the fact that we are humans who feel fear.

The trends of the 21st century don’t respect this truism. But the nice and easy part about speaking and reflecting in truisms is that they exist whether we choose to respect them or not.

The reason I am writing about fear is because fear sent me into a state of symptomatic depression last week.

What was I so afraid of?

To understand the answer, please, for a moment, consider my day-to-day existence. Life is a constant upswell of tasks and responsibilities. It is not sustainable, how busy I am. But the payday is worth it: a happy and busy and nurturing household of 5. My life’s known no greater calling.

Enter the fear. For, while living a contented life, I live in an environment that demands I do more. Praise, acknowledgement, achievement and status are the reward system of 21st century living. And as much as I tell myself that I should be satisfied with my day-to-day operations as a teacher and father — I am not satisfied. The urge to be more seems to be a fundamental part of my makeup, much like fear.

I found myself on Monday experiencing a pronounced and odd fear: the fear that everything would work out in the end. 

How is that a fear?

I’ll show you.

Say everything does work out for me in the end. What will that look like? I’ll be retired with an empty nest and my beautiful wife. I will have little to do. My responsibilities will have been met. I can experience the true expression of leisure in life. The fear? I fear that I will absolutely loathe that day. I will be bored out of my mind. I fear that I am spending all my time cultivating a life that is fruitful only in externalities. I fear that my inner-life, the sanctum of my mind and spirit is slowly disintegrating as a result. If this fear were to prove true, what will be the point of all my hard work? I will have given my life and soul to a cause that deprives me of all things worthwhile.

I had to have some help with this fear. I was on the phone with my sponsor, following instructions. I called others. I apologized to my wife for acting like a total prick lately (which was the manifestation of that fear I described). I set the fear down on paper, wrote about it. 

And I got to thinking about fear — how we all feel it — how complex fear can be in today’s world. And I sat down to write about it because I have a blog where I share my thoughts on everyday matters, and how much the everydayness of those matters matter.