Why Be Afraid Of Being Afraid?

Life certainly throws out a more-than-fair amount of challenges into one’s daily life. Even when you think you can fight your way through one obstacle, another one pops up to either take the first one’s place or make matters even worse. It certainly seems that way, over the past two years.

If anyone is keeping score, issues in my professional life have caused me difficulties and sent me home long before COVID-19 took hold. Despite this radical change of life and the reckless endangerment of my dream job by others, I kept on pushing and fighting. Then, job interview after job interview came and went. Most left me feeling pretty good and certain that I wold turn a corner. But I’ve been consistently passed up over and over.

Then at the beginning of the year, the world fell into chaos (more so than it usually is) and the pandemic struck. I’m sure that at this point, I don’t need to explain the problems and issues that having the world self-isolate and essentially lock itself down has caused. Even six months later, the world is still licking its wounds and trying to recover.

Then, we attempted to sell our home. We came to this decision as a result of my current job situation and the fact that we’re trying to eliminate debt. Despite many people who came to view our home, structural issues with our foundation caused most people to pass. We have come to the decision that we need to repair our foundation, which requires the demolishing of our finished basement. This sucks, because it also meant we had to take our house off the market as we can’t really show the house while we’re in mid-construction/renovating.

It almost feels as though everything is coming up bullshit and sometimes it certainly feels as though it would be easier to simply give up and let go. And no, I’m not being fatalistic or trying to send out red flags; I simply mean that the Buddhist side of me feels that life shouldn’t be such a struggle, that I shouldn’t have to force so hard in order for life to be good. The martial artist in me believes that I need to keep fighting and win, no matter what the struggle. If it comes down to me or them, it won’t be me! More often than not, the martial artist wins over the Buddhist. Such is life.

“Success Is Stumbling From Failure To Failure With No Loss Of Enthusiasm.”

– Winston S. Churchill

As a general rule, most people are afraid of failure. They see it as a weakness and they believe that it’s an embarrassment or shameful to fail at something. But the irony is that I can promise beyond any reasonable doubt that every living person has failed at something. It’s inevitable. You show me someone who claims they’ve never failed at something in life, I’ll show you a liar.

But failure is an important part of life. You see, life believes in showing you what you’re doing wrong. It sucks, can be painful and can even be disruptive to one’s life. But it sure shows you what path you should be taking. Failure isn’t a failure, it’s a learning tool. It helps you to grow and become the person you’re meant to be. I’ve been defeated and failed at a number of things in my life. But I keep on fighting. Because what’s the point of the lesson if you do nothing with it?

Don’t be afraid of failing at something. As long as you keep pushing, fighting and moving forward, you’ll eventually clear the storm and come out on top. And should you happen to fall and fail, the important part is to rise, dust yourself off and find a new and different path to pursue. ☯