Be Fearless

I've had bad things happen to me and sometimes I think...is this the end of it for me? Is my future forever changed by this incident? There's a fear of losing everything. It's during these moments that I don't sleep. I lay awake the whole night thinking, replaying, in my head, things that I don't want to remember. Getting out of bed sporadically to search for a remedy. After I exhaust every neuron in my brain, I start thinking about the "what ifs". What if I went to jail? How would I handle it? How would my family/friends react? What if I just leave and run away? Could I survive? Where would it lead me? This whirlwind of thoughts, racing in all directions, make me a wreck.

One day, I decided to pour out every drop of fear in my cup and thought about what I needed to be strong and resilient. I finally met this ineffable stage of invincibility and some inexplicable source of inner strength overcame me. I can't even really describe it, exactly. It didn't feel like I could take on any challenge in the world. It felt like I needed to face every challenge knowing that the results would change me as a person and I needed to embrace that change. After sifting through hundreds of hypothetical outcomes to my situation, I wasn't sure if I just gave up trying to make certainty out of uncertainty or if I wanted to deliberately stop being afraid. I realized that no matter what happened, I would continue living my life given the cards that I was dealt. I couldn't change my hand, but I could continue playing the game to the best of my ability. I was still scared shitless about going through with life, but I didn't have any consternation by it. There is value in every possible outcome and I was genuinely curious about it.

What does success mean to you?

I watched the US Olympic trials today. One of the races got me up in tears. It wasn't an inspirational triumph; it was an inspirational failure. I watched Alysia Montano, female 800m Sprint runner, trip and fall in the last 150m of the race. Full of emotion, she got up and fell back down 3-4 times before dragging her spiritless body to the finish line. I felt my eyes well up, knowing she put in years of blood/sweat/tears into a sport where misfortune decided her fate and not whether she trained hard enough. I can't match her state of mind, but I could share her pain in a parallel example.

Ingrained in a culture that says you can fulfill your dreams if you set your heart on it, and when you wholeheartedly do so but don't get the expected outcome, you feel lost. Frustrated with the world, asking God why the pieces didn't fall into place. So many people can tell you what success means to them. The media can tell you what it looks like. But, perhaps what we need is to redefine what success means to ourselves. We have to remind ourselves that we are the sum of our different parts and not just one thing. No one is all-athlete or all-artist or all-politician nor do we need to burden success on one aspect of ourselves. I don't pity Montano for falling. Of course, I rooted for her to win, but she won me over when I saw her carrying her daughter with her husband standing by her side. Montano had a beautiful family. Is being a good Mother not also a medal of success? We cannot solely measure ourselves by the metrics set by the society, because it requires conformity to an unrealistic perfection. Rather, we need to measure ourselves by how much love we have for ourselves and how much positive impact we have on those around us.

Irony burns

Hillary Clinton's social media tweeted "Delete your account" to Donald Trump, knowing that Clinton herself deleted her emails during the server scandal (or so they say). It got me thinking about how there's something strangely pedagogical about irony. It makes us look like fools when it happens, but it brings to light our hypocrisy.

So, I write publicly to this blog, because I became intrigued with translating thought into writing. This blog gives me a space to share my thoughts and to be transparent about myself. I thought it would help others understand me better as well. Except, I hesitated because I was afraid of exposing myself. I knew there would come a time where I would have to reveal things about myself that make my teeth clench and eyes close. I've heard it explained perfectly as standing naked in front of a crowd - uncomfortable and welcoming judgment. I was concerned that I would revert to my tendency to evade honesty and truth. It's my conditioned inclination to hide things I don't want to be seen.

For example, it's not very hard for me to create a story or an image of myself to the public eye that diverts their attention away from my actual self. But there reveals the irony of it all. This blog is supposed to be about authenticity/translucency/courage, but instead, if I fabricated all that content in fear of overexposure, then I'm only doing the opposite. Kind of foolish, no? The discrepancy between my intended purpose for this blog and my actual actions accentuates how consciously afraid I am of vulnerability. So afraid that I needed to appear vulnerable to onlookers so that I didn't have to actually be vulnerable. When that thought came to me, I couldn't believe I was doing it. (I'll skip the vitamins today. There's no deficiency of irony here)

What kind of insight can we gain from this? Irony seems to happen when you are oblivious to your own hypocrisy. For me, I'm writing this blog, because I want to be comfortable in my own skin and show people who I am through writing. But, I have to be careful about my hidden personal desire to appear a certain way to my readers. I have to be truthful, and I have to face my insecurities even if it means changing the way people think about me. In the end, this is therapy for me and if I can't do it correctly, why feed to my mental sickness?

There are plenty examples of irony out there in the world. So, search for them, pay attention to them and don't be fooled. Use it to heighten the awareness of your true desires.