The Zum of All Fears

(Continued from previous entry)

So here it is again: I seem eternally drawn to some form of this dance with anxiety. (Sometimes literally, dressed as a "pirate wench".)

The game of Cucumber is designed to amp up the anxiety level. Of course it's all in the name of good-natured fun, but the fear is real. Hands shake, voices tremble, and etiquette is thrown completely out the window as trash talk and whining become the primary modes of communication. Even the most demure of players can suddenly display a surprising vocabulary when faced with a bad hand or an imminent foray beyond their comfort zone. Every game becomes an experiment in social Darwinism as players cleave to a single credo: survive at anyone else's expense. But besides the obvious entertainment value, I believe there is also a certain educational merit in experiencing our primal impulses and raw reactions as social facades are stripped away, sometimes literally.

As I mentioned before in the entry "All In", I've always been somewhat annoyed by the existence of my primal survival fears, or more precisely, by what I feel are their inordinate influence on my thoughts and behaviors. One of the primary motivations for my walkabout is to confront these issues directly and teach myself that the strong influence of these deep-rooted fears and hungers are no longer necessary in my life.

There is a precedent in my life for this kind of approach. I used to be quite scared of heights and would avoid high buildings and cliffs as much as possible. I remember a trip to Europe a long time ago with my friend Mike. At the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, we went up on the roof which sloped precariously toward the edge which only had a very low wall along it.
We both sat down quickly and nervously watched other tourists and even kids as they happily traversed the walkway along the edge. It took us a while before we could get up the nerve to make our way down from the roof. I can't remember the view at all, but I can still picture the edge of the roof. In Germany, I froze on a high bridge over a gorge near Neuschwanstein Castle. And don't even get me started on the Leaning Tower of Pisa with its slick marble sloping walkways around the outside (!) of the tower with absolutely no rails!

Years later, some friends convinced me to go bungee jumping with them.....from a balloon. It was kind of a spur of the moment idea, one that I obviously didn't give enough thought to. When we got to the place, I suddenly remembered my fear of heights when I realized that all the other people there for the jump were rock climbers, sky divers, and other assorted thrill-seekers. (I'm notorious among my friends for my lousy memory, so believe me, this isn't a stretch.) But I didn't have much time to think about it because the organizers decided that I should be the first to jump that day because if the winds picked up, then the jumps would have to be postponed till the next day, but I had a flight to Guatemala the next day.

I climbed into the balloon's little basket with my heart pounding so hard it felt like it would burst. As the balloon rose into the air, I clutched the basket's upper ropes so tightly in terror that my hands and arms began to go numb. I thought I was having a heart attack and that without the use of my arms I might fall out of the tiny basket since the rim only came up as high as my thigh. But we managed to reach the appropriate height without incident and the operator hooked me up to the big bungee cords. I managed to get my feet over the edge and sit on the rim of the basket. Then I looked down. And froze.

The tiny people down on the ground counted down dramatically from ten to zero, but I just continued to sit there in a daze. Then my mouth re-engaged as I tried to come up with stalling tactics. After a bit of this, the operator had had enough and called down with his radio, "I think we have a screamer here." This comment, I'm sure, was designed to work its magic on me, and sure enough, my fear of ridicule trumped my fear of heights and with the next countdown I forced myself out into nothingness.
 
It wasn't so much a "bungee jump" as a "bungee fall" or a "bungee plummet". (I managed to do the exact opposite of the Thai proverb that I stuck at the end of the last entry: "If you're gonna fall, you might as well jump.") I just sorta slid off the edge of the basket and watched in terror as the ground came rushing up at me. Then the tension of the bungee cords kicked in and I was soon bouncing back skyward where I cart-wheeled over like a rag doll puppet. Images of the earth and sky alternated as I did the human yo-yo thing a few more times, and soon they were lowering me down to the ground. I was still in a daze, but jubilant too.

I hadn't been attempting to "cure" my fear of heights, so it wasn't until much later that I realized that the bungee jump had managed to diminish my fear quite a bit. Tall buildings, roofs, and cliff ledges are no longer the problem they used to be. But to be clear, I am still nowhere near being a fearless mountain climber, as evidenced by my terrifying, achingly slow, and profanity-laced ascent of a cliff face in Joshua Tree National Park, much to the amusement of my seasoned rock-climbing friends.....and everybody else within earshot.

What a blessing it would be if my walkabout could somehow similarly diminish my primal fears. I realize that it's an ideal, but I can imagine the sense of liberation I would feel if I no longer worried about hunger or shelter, or some of the associated fears regarding injury, loss of possessions, income, social status, or accomplishment. And yes, I realize that fear can be a good thing too. A healthy fear of heights, for example, helps keep us away from unsafe precipices. And after all, fear and craving are parts of the human condition, indeed what all life is designed to do. They are fundamental elements of the biological engine of survival and procreation. We are designed to fear and crave, to protect and feed and procreate this bit of universal matter and energy that we define as our "self".

But times have changed drastically since we had to struggle day to day just to survive. As I mentioned in the blog entry "All In", our civilization has improved the state of people of my socio-economic status to a point where we really don't need to fear things like starvation or exposure any more. (This has been achieved through means both wonderful and dubious, but I won't get into that here.) I would actually have to try very hard to truly starve to death. Even then, at some point, someone would have me thrown in a hospital and force-fed with tubes. Yet I am still deeply and unconsciously influenced by these primal fears. This is largely due to the fact that for the vast history of humanity these fears and hungers were vital to our survival. It is only very recently (historically/geologically speaking) that such a large sector of the population no longer really needs these fears and hungers to survive, so they remain very hard-wired into our system.

While these fears and cravings have served our species and our predecessors well throughout eons of life on this planet, it now seems to be a darkly ironic fact that these same fears and cravings now threaten our very survival by causing world conflicts, overpopulation, ecological degradation, resource hoarding, etc. Our increase in population and technological power have caused a corresponding increase in the risk to our survival, not to mention the survival of plenty of other species too, some of whom we've already wiped out.

Perhaps we are at a threshold. Will we mature fast enough to keep pace with our power? Only time will tell. The positive spin: the very threats to our survival may be the engine of our evolution as humans. After all, natural selection decrees that wiser heads will have to prevail if we are to survive. I, for one, remain optimistic. We are learning to coexist. (Hey, look at Europe after millennia of bloody conflicts.) The concepts of conservation and sustainability are finally getting some traction in our civilization. And we seem to be realizing how interconnected this whole world is. Whatever happens, this promises to be an interesting century.....and millennium.

Yikes, I've really wandered far afield here.

Interestingly, though I initially set out on my walkabout to address primal fears like those regarding food and shelter, the fear that has come up the most has actually been "social fear". By this, I mean my fear of rejection and the corresponding desire for acceptance. First and foremost, us humans are social animals, and this walkabout practice severely challenges my ability to fit in with the rest of the herd. Basically, I look like a nutcase out on the street in my monk outfit with my bowl, broom, and dustpan. The vast majority of people want nothing to do with me and do their best to ignore my presence. I don't really fit in anywhere, not even in the various meditation centers where my robes actually delineate me apart from the other monks. This all serves to make me extremely self-conscious and it takes a lot of awareness and practice to relax into this new awkward monk incarnation.

This is another reason why the game of Cucumber is relevant here because it deals directly with social fears regarding self-image, social acceptance, humiliation, etc. These social fears of rejection and the corresponding desires for acceptance are the main way that my primal impulses manifest---not only on my walkabout, but in the rest of my "normal" life too. Self-esteem, image, acceptance, status, achievement, and praise are the carrots that accompany the sticks of my fears.

To be free of my social fear would probably be the greatest blessing of all. This is the ideal of the truly liberated Taoist sage, immune to insult and praise alike, impervious to those "imposters" triumph and disaster (Kipling), free to live from the heart. But social fears are hard-wired into me, just like the rest of my fears.

In fact, there is a distinct possibility that this little experiment could very well backfire and end up exacerbating the very fears that I am attempting to free myself from. By limiting my access to food and shelter, I may end up craving them even more than before. By posturing myself as a social outcaste, I may end up increasing my hunger to be socially accepted.

And the more I think about it and the more I write about it, the more I realize that I will probably lose this psychological game of chicken with my fears. I will most likely fail. But as long as I don't lose the physical aspect of the game in the process (or else, hey, GAME OVER), it will still have all been worth it, for I will have learned an important lesson about my limitations. And it will finally be over. I will have taken my best shot and the monkey will be off my back. (He's been sitting there for quite a few years now, whispering in my ear.) I can give up trying to conquer my fears. (After all, perhaps it is my aversion to fear---the fear of fear---that it would be best to let go of first.) If I'm really lucky, I will let go of ideals, surrender to who I am, and collapse into my being, broken and beautiful as it is. And if I manage to embrace my fears and flaws and failures, then maybe I will stumble into some of the gems that are hidden in the darker corners of the psyche.....silence, space, peace, even freedom. For if we embrace the darkness, what can touch us then? Nothing...
...and, perhaps, Everything.

But for now, I'm still a scatter-brained, anxious monk poser, pondering if I'm going through some mid-life crisis or if I'm just eternally immature. Does it really matter?

And the new year is already upon us. Plan A looms on my horizon. I'm hoping to start my walkabout again in a week or two. Still haven't figured out any logistics yet, but I try not to let the details bother me too much. Though in some ways, it's been more difficult waiting to hit the road again than it was being on the road. The dance with anxiety never really stopped.....and probably never will.

But who knows, while I probably won't be able to overcome my fears, perhaps I can at least be brave enough to dig through my old box of photographs up in my mother's garage and find one of those infamous pirate wench pictures and post it back in the last entry. Heck, maybe I'll post a few of the Cucumber photos through the years while I'm at it.

So chess, poker, tennis, and now Cucumber, eh? The opportunities for practice are everywhere at all times, for life is the ultimate game after all.

Or perhaps you see it as a dance? A Divine Dance?
Or maybe you see life as a struggle, a battle? A Big Brawl?
Or a dramatic Bottom-of-the-Ninth at Bat?
Or a Tremulous Trapeze Trick?
Or darkly, the Nameless Noose?!

After all, Reality tends to be highly reflective. How you see is usually what you get.
So choose your metaphor.....and come out swinging! 



"Can you start over from a hundred?"
---me asking the crowd for a new countdown at the bungee jump