That Fear Whispering in Your Ear is Only a Bad Memory

 Fear is nothing more than a bad memory.

Why are you afraid to go to the gym? Are you nervous to be seen because once upon a time in high school you accidentally bench pressed more than your body weight and the gym instructor yelled out, "This one is country strong!" 

The comment made you feel strong at first, but then all of your classmates laughed like a little pack of hungry hyenas, because you were the redneck in a college town, and you were an easy target. 

It wasn't your fault you were born to generations of farmers and bluecollars, where you were splitting fire wood and carrying hay bales and had that sort of innate strength because you had to. For years you tried to disappear through restrictive eating and too much cardio, because you wanted so desperately to fit in. 

Just know that now, you throw weight around for fun, and do it in a gym filled with other strong folks. You aren't afraid to be strong anymore, in fact, you only want to be stronger every day. Infinitely progressing, or at least reaching a peak and maintaining it.

Your fear of being seen and heard has dissipated too. When you were younger and you just wanted to shrink away because the world thought the things you believed in were silly. Why would anyone want to let weeds grow wild in their yard? How ugly and uncivilized. 

You spent years explaining the benefits of wild plants, to help pollinators--like those monarch butterflies that everyone loves--on deaf ears. But eventually your words have found the right people to listen, and it seems that maybe the world is more okay with a few stray dandelions dotting their lawns. 

After years of being told how to vote, you decided to think for yourself. It was scary at first, and ultimately you realized you weren't in line with either major American party, but fell somewhere else. You wanted social and ecological justice, bodily autonomy, financial and political accountability. You wanted freedom to be absolute -- gays should be able to own guns and smoke marijuana and get married. You wanted the budget to be balanced and an end to warmongering, so those precious tax dollars could be allocated on domestic issues, rather than expanding the American Empire.

You stood up against the two party system. You fought for third part voter access and collected ballot access petition signatures. You even met could-have-been president Gary Johnson, and you helped open the minds of many people to the possibilities beyond a binary and oppressive political system. While you aren't quite libertarian anymore, but believe in a type of anarcho-egalitarianism. 

Whatever the definition, you believe that everyone has a right to exist, and that the earth beneath our feet can belong to no one in particular, but only to everyone collectively. We are merely here to borrow and barter and hopefully when we leave, we leave it better than when we found it. 

Fear, its the little voice telling you: you aren't enough, you're too much, too loud, too quiet, too shy, too bright, too everything. Because once upon a time, someone or some situation made you feel inadequate, or you were hurt, or you were forced into a situation you couldn't quite escape from. Fear is there to protect you from repeating that same "mistake". Fear wants you to be safe.

Even if you are feeling imbalanced, just know, you are just right. You are here. You are in the now.  Freedom from past circumstance dictating future possibility is transcendence. Accepting divine timing, or at least entropic opportunity, and instead of worrying how it will all work out, you just know it will. Past failures no longer effect your present tense existence. Fear dissolves when you are able to sync yourself into the now. 

While you might not be liked by everyone--if you are able to like yourself--that is when the bad memories dissolve, and fear no longer whispers in your ear. When you are willing to give everyday your version of your best self, you might just accidentally become brave. And bravery is only achieved by facing those fears in the mirror, and knowing you no longer need to hear those inner-criticisms, or revisit those pasts traumas. And if you fear the unknown, if you fear change, then that is probably the thing you need most.

Bravery is not the absence of fear, but the absolution of perfectionism.