Tonight I saw my six year old tear up in panic when his dad and little brother said they wanted to go to outer space.
"Not you, mom, right? not us. no way- count us out."
It made me remember when I was a little girl, before I had any understanding that most of us never do exactly what we say we want to do, my dad told me if he ever had the chance he would 100% go to the moon.
I was absolutely horrified.
My daddy.
in a rocket ship.
in big black vast nothingness and everythingness of space.
I felt sick.
So many bad things could happen, not just out there, but along the way, AND back.
The whole thing fraught with likely death disaster.
But even in my panic,
even in my steadfast objection-
I remember his eyes.
Not a lot excites my father (not in a fun way, at least)
((plenty “excites” him otherwise lol))
I remember the specific push and pull between a little girl horrified of something bad happening to her daddy
and
his glowing eyes.
a little girl seeing a dream in her father’s eyes.
It really confused me.
My dad is an overprotective, new york italian, worrier.
Fearful of outcomes you could not even think up if you tried.
(don’t sit with your back to the door in any public space/ we check alllllllll the halloween candy/keep your head on a swivel at all times/nature hikes are highly frowned upon- obviously you will most likely either get eaten or end up on a true crime documentary.)
The type of hyper-vigilance I am both blessed and cursed to have inherited.
Blessed because I’m sure it has kept my loved ones and I safe at some point- a highly creative use of fear.
Cursed because- every other draining minute of my life that it hasn’t done anything but suck life force from my mind, body, and soul.
But I digress,
how on fucking earth (literally) could this man all of a sudden release every overboard irrational worry and fear he has ever had and in theory commit to this drastically high stakes mission of leaving the planet?
Where is the inner space where fear and trepidation get swallowed by enthusiasm/inspiration/life force itself?
Where is that space for me?
Where does fear disappear?
And even if it doesn’t disappear,
what is so fucking fantastic that fear automatically loses its grip?
Maybe fear isn’t a villain that’s meant to be defeated and disappear (temporarily).
Yeah, yeah I know “all it wants is to keep us alive.”
But I struggle to get chummy with it when it sends me into panic attacks over math tests or has me anxious with worry for 3 days because someone who looked very ill coughed precisely as they were walking by me and I was unprepared and didn’t hold my breath. (are you judging me or with me on this?)
What if fear wants us to be so intimately aware of it SO THAT it can then soften?
Perhaps then it would gift us its melting into something deeper.
What if we turn our head sideways and look at it differently?
We often view it as the contrast- recognizing what we want through what’s repelling us from what we don’t but maybe we’re just putting all the emphasis on the wrong part of the equation.
It’s not so much that our fear is showing us what we want.
I mean, it is, but
that keeps it in an oddly adversarial type of relationship
…as if fear is a wall to bounce off us to go back toward what we actually want- it’s “opposite”.
instead of bouncing off my fear, I want to melt into it.
surrender in a way that fear opens.
a wall that turns into a doorway
of vast space. (ironically)
Fear doesn’t disappear.
it opens-
but only when you love it soft enough.
Maybe (for my dad) outer space is a place where worry & fear can’t exist.
It is melted and swallowed in the face of such profound grandeur.
and yet, that grandeur, that 62 mile high perspective, holds all of it with grace.
side note- while typing that thought, I googled how far away space is from earth and was absolutely shocked to find it is only 62 miles.
My oh my, how we grossly over estimate the distance between us and everything.
I’d say my biggest fear is purposelessness-
not knowing or missing the point/the purpose of anything and everything in my life. Especially when you pair it with the good ol’ death timer always ticking in the background of my mind.
There have been times in my life where I’ve looked so hard for purpose that I missed it hanging out on the tip of my own nose.
Efforting that hard at anything inevitably ends up meaning I am missing the point. It’s not a matter of being averse to working for something- it’s more so the active awareness that putting that type of effort on a pedestal means chasing a story/an identity narrative rather than the truth.
Over the years I’ve made my quest for purpose mean many intense, silly things:
"i don’t identify with the term “fun”"
"i don’t spend time on things that i don’t see a big vision for"
"i won’t begin a project that doesn’t satisfy every nook and cranny of my soul"
"i have a low tolerance for living in a way that doesn’t feel “important”"
But if I love that fear softer, I can rest in the knowing that its presence means I have that inherent capacity to identify and lean into life in a way that is right for me. I trust myself to feel into the depth of any situation. It’s not something I have to try to do. It’s always running in the background (and foreground).
Our greatest fears are a pulse that we can feel like a heartbeat or like the jaws theme song.
Recently I’ve been really struggling with something I’m not quite ready to share.
I’ve felt myself sucked into my fear.
Specifically, I’ve been desperately searching for a purpose, a meaning- an interpretation of this painful event to rest on. This forcing has only brought more angst to the situation. I’m too deep in processing to see with perspective. I’ve been carrying more anger than I ever have before in my entire life.
And now, because of coming back to this piece of writing I started months ago (the dreaded substack drafts that rarely ever see the light of day), I now am forced to ask myself the question “How do I love my fear in this situation softer?”
I don’t remember where so I can’t verbatim copy and paste it but I’ll try not to butcher it. He talks about how we can’t cut off a part of ourself and expect to feel whole.
Unfortunately, cutting fear and painful situations out of our lives is not going to help in a meaningful, long term way. The sooner we can know that the sooner we can turn towards our struggles and see them for what they really are- for what they truly can be.
I think right now I’ll hold fear’s hand and walk with it until I find my version of going to the moon.
[disclaimer: as romantic as it may sound and as much as I love my father’s happiness, I still would not let him go to the fucking moon. Although sometimes I’d like to send him there metaphorically.]
Share this post