I disagree with Dune
Fear is not the mind killer
Yes, I love Dune. It’s a completely realized world with lots of intriguing ideas about humanity buried in a phenomenal story. There’s also plenty of wisdom in it.
But “Fear is the mind killer” is not true.
I’m not saying it’s COMPLETELY wrong. Fear can act like a mind-killer. A housecat can act like a killer in the right context.
What do you think about that analogy? We not only allow these furry friends into our home, we love them. I mean, like, more than family.
But they are killers. If you were smaller than them, they would kill you.
Fear is like that.
Fear acts like a mind-killer when you’re smaller than it. When you make fear the big thing, the only thing. When you allow fear to make the decisions for you.
When you’re the same size as fear, you have to wrestle with it. The outcome of the battle will determine who wins: You and the thing you want to do, or the overwhelming feeling of shut-down or run-like-hell.
It’s important to be bigger than fear. Not so that you can keep it at bay. Why would you do that? Your cat loves you. It’s there to offer its gifts to you. There’s a mutual relationship happening.
Get that mutual relationship with fear, and you have a very beneficial relationship.
Let’s be clear: even when a cat is smaller than you, it can be dangerous. It might even be able to kill you, under the right circumstances. But the odds are it won’t. You make sure your cat can be tamed. You nurture it, give it a place to excrete, spend some time with it. Depending on the cat, you can find the balance.
I’m not suggesting we nurture our fear, or give it a place to excrete. I am suggesting that we have a relationship with our fear that matches both what we want and what the sensation of fear wants to tell us.
It’s smart to be afraid of falling off a tall building. For those of us who lose our orientation or desire to jump (not out of any suicidal tendencies, but just because we WANNA JUMP! WHEEEEEE!) it makes sense to let that fear keep us off ledges entirely. For others who have personal or professional reasons to traverse ledges, the fear is simply a reminder not to get cocky, a la Han Solo and Luke Skywalker.
“Okay, fear, I hear you. I’m paying attention to the ledge. I’m aware that any mistake I make on this ledge is much more serious and permanent than one on a balance-beam six inches above the ground.”
That’s not a mind killer. It’s a mind enhancer. It’s waking us up to a reality our mind tends to filter one way or the other, either towards overconfidence or panic.
By experiencing fear, by choosing to deal with it, by tolerating the sensation and moving forward, we acknowledge both our capacity to see things as worse than they are and better. If we keep ourselves larger than our fear, it’s a reset mechanism, and a very helpful one too.
What’s your fear story? Send it to me! adam@acole.net