The Places That Scare Us

Fear handicaps. It takes hold of you and squeezes until you cannot breathe nor move. Fear kills.  Lately I have been very afraid and that fear almost killed my happiness and my effectiveness as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I am not afraid of meeting people nor am I afraid of Spanish. I speak the language recklessly. Spewing poorly conjugated verbs and made up Spanglish nouns. I do this without shame like a toddler learning to walk. I fall all over the place gleefully ready to learn. The fear of failure is my monster.  It haunts my dreams as well as my mornings.  A huge part of it is ego. I want to be the best Peace Corps Volunteer ever. I think my group is the best Peace Corps group ever!   That ego combined with a huge need to be helpful makes the prospect of disappointing my community too much to bear at times.  My father refers to this the trap of being awesome. There have been times when my want to leave my community in awe of my ability to be witty, giving, and creative has superseded my want to simply experience. It is at these times that my lack of wit, my rigidness creatively, and my inability to give or do anything hurts the most. My first 3 months here in my community are about me learning about the place and people that I live with.  I sit for hours in a school and watch. I cannot teach right now. I cannot start any projects.  I want to pasear (visit and talk)
 to 11 houses a day yet the heat, which at times reaches 100 degrees, prevents that. I can only experience. Sometimes I fail even at that. It can be tedious and hot and there is no place to show or do. That ego and that fear of failure trapped me for many days. I couldn’t get out of bed and racked my brain how everybody would see me as fraud. All the Peace Corps Volunteers that I admire would be disappointed, as would my community. It got so bad that the thing that I was afraid of most, failing my community, I began to do. I shrunk away from the people in my community and ran to things that would give me comfort from the Monster of failure. For me, it was the easy access to Internet. For others it is food, or love, or liquor, or shopping. Whatever it is that we use to deter us from the things we are afraid of only prolongs that pain. Instead of looking at that monster we run and run creating a cycle. I was afraid of failure.  So afraid that I began to fail which would make me feel worse and want to sooth the pain of it.    

            I believe in the power of meditation and self-actualization. A leader in meditation Pema Chordron speaks at length about the power of fear in our lives. She has a book “The Places that scare you: A guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times “, and reading it helped me allot.  I knew that the only way to conquer this monster was to first look at it. Looking at it was painful. No one wants to see himself or herself as egotistical or needy. No one wants to see that they have actually not been mindful. However it is the only way to get over it.  I looked at myself and decided I had to change the pattern that I was in or I would stay emotionally stuck and would not have an effective or happy Peace Corps Service. I gave myself very small goals in order to battle my fear.  Here are the goals I made for myself:

            Get out of Bed

            DO NOT use the computer in the morning

            Leave the House

            Go to School

            Visit 2 houses

Finding peace

These things may seem very easy but when you are handicapped by fear they can be impossible. Little by little I began to be able to look at that monster and fight. I was able to be more present in the moment and exhibited more control over myself. This allowed me to give more of myself. My experiences with people in my town were rich and substantial. I was happy and at peace. Of course I am not finished. I will have to teach myself these lessons over and over again. Like a toddler I will stumble and fall many times yet I will get back up gleefully ready to try again.  I urge you all to continue to explore the places that scare you and to fight against those monsters that haunt you. Your life will be richer for it.