Change

This post is not about writing, per se. It is written for a friend.

I hear you say, "fear" is what you feel, most of the time, and I feel for you. I'm writing this little story for you. For change.

Get ready to change.

It is so hard to drop the history and step off in a new direction to try some different way to live your life, but it is worth a shot. For starters, select a new mantra to replace the old "I feel fear most of the time." Be prepared to say, "I feel creative most of the time" (or 'I feel calm' or 'open to new experiences most of the time,' or choose something else to try). Anything will do, as long as it is more acceptable to you than "fear" and it is something you can visualize and you might like to see as a real part of yourself, an integral part of your identity. You can always try a new mantra later if this one doesn't work out.

Now, you can be on the lookout for "fear," and every time you see it coming, or see that it has already arrived, face it straight on. Examine it closely. Make sure it is really an instance of the "fear" you would like to see disappear from your life.

Your hands are strong. The "fear" is beginning to look a lot like a single sheet of white paper. You see the "fear" floating and taunting you, a piece of paper swirling in the air, swirling and flying all around you. It is teasing you with the horrible words it has written on it, but you suddenly recognize that it is really quite harmless. It is merely a piece of paper, and you needn't read the words on it, because you already know what they say, and those words are an old story that now bores you, as it is irrelevant to your new life.

You break out in a smile when you finally see that this little ridiculous piece of paper, the one that boasted that it had a hold on your heart and mind, is just a flimsy little sheet of plain old paper! How easily you have crumpled up sheets of paper - just like this one - many, many times before in your life, when you recognized that their usefulness as a paper messenger for someone long ago was already spent, and these papers were taking up space in your environment, and you knew you would never need them again. You felt so free, free to crumple up those old receipts and bills and letters and all the other papers. There were papers full of advertising for products you would never buy and junk mail for companies desperate to get your attention. They all tried to impose themselves on you - but you wouldn't let them, because you knew you had other things to do with your life other than hold onto worthless pieces of paper. You threw them out, with no regrets.

Now, you are staring at one sheet of paper that has "fear" written all over it. This paper is here with you, in the air, and it seems to have a mind of its own. It is fluttering around. But you discover that it is easy for you to chase as it flies around your head. You swipe it out of the sky with one hand. You hold it still. As it struggles to fly, you find it easy to keep it grounded and close to you. It is under your control.

Now, you remember how strong you are, compared to a piece of paper, and you decide to use both hands firmly on that piece of paper, to put it in its proper place, most likely the trash can. Imagine yourself squashing that annoying piece of paper into a little ball, as you would ball up any torn, empty envelope or old receipt, just before you toss it into the garbage.

Now imagine where you are going to toss it - you have decided against throwing it in the trash. Your squashed up, now-harmless, ball of "fear" will be going away permanently, to be dropped by you into a bottomless pit, a chasm, from which it can never return. There is a safe place for you to stand at the top of the chasm, with a pretty tall concrete wall at the edge of the chasm, a protective wall that leaves you in no danger of falling, but is not quite so tall that you cannot see over it. You stand right next to the wall, but you deliberately turn around a hundred and eighty degrees and face yourself away from that bottomless pit, looking in the opposite direction, but you keep your back against that strong wall. Now, when you crumple up "fear" and toss it, backwards over your shoulder, and it falls down, down, down into that chasm, it cannot escape. It is gone, gone forever.

You have actually chased, caught, captured, crumpled, and tossed into the bottomless chasm the first of your recognized instances of "fear." This feeling, that you have succeeded in eliminating a single "fear," is exhiliarating, and different. It makes you all of a sudden experience many different emotions at once, emotions that you previously had no room for, since "fear" was front and center in your life.

You begin to explore these other emotions, and find that they are not as unusual or as scary as you thought they might be. They are actually easier to manage than "fear."

I hope you enjoyed this game. Playing it will help to change your focus, to distract you from "fear," and when you play you will find that there is a huge void in your life where "fear" used to hang out.

Now, you must fill that void with something else. If you have nothing else to fill it with, start with a single blade of grass, plucked by you from a luxurious lawn, as you are enjoying a day in the sweet sunshine of early spring. There are more blades of grass where that one came from, and each is softer and lovelier and sweeter smelling than a piece of paper.