Fears

A friend of mine wrote about following our fears a few weeks ago.  At first when reading it I didn’t really like what he had said. I mean who wants to follow their fears, most of want to run from them. Yet it has gotten me to thinking about my fears. I am not really sure what my fears in life are. I suppose my greatest fear would be to lose one of my children but that is a fear that you cannot follow and hope I never have to face.

I spent many years of my life living in fear, the kind where your heart races, your body feels hot and you are almost immobilized with the fear. I had fear that I would do something wrong, fear that either my children or I would be hurt, fear that I would be left alone and not be able to support myself and my children, fear of just being alone.  I lived with those fears but did not follow them....instead I escaped from them.  It took courage but the freedom of living without that fear was such a relief.

I would like to think that at this stage of my life I could follow my fears instead of running from them but I honestly am not sure what my fears are. I have written before about change and how I do not deal well with it so maybe that is my fear and also the fear my buddy spoke of. Yet the thought of change doesn’t “scare” me the way it did in my past.  I also am no longer stressed over the errors I make at work, I still get angry with myself when I mess up but I don’t dwell on them, I just correct them the best I can and carry on. I have learned that we all make mistakes and without mistakes in our lives how would we ever learn.  I now live alone and spend many hours with myself so although I get lonely at times, I no longer fear being alone...in fact many days I welcome it.

So I have now reached the point where I am wondering, if I have no fears am I really living life. Have I gotten so comfortable in my personal and work life that there are no challenges to cause me to feel fear? I obviously need to spend some time thinking about this. I have been working on a bucket list for this past year, doing things that I have wanted to do, some that were physically challenging for me but the only fear would be that I would be unable to finish...really nothing to be scared about. I was nervous singing in a choir concert for the first time but I wouldn’t call that fearful. Maybe my idea what fear differs from what others feel as fear. Maybe I have mixed up the feeling of being “scared” with the feeling of “fear”. There are other things that I don’t want to do but it isn’t that I am scared  to do them....like eating stuffed mushroom caps....I just really don’t want to. I guess I would need to make some major changes in my life to be able to follow my fear....try something totally off the wall.  Take off on a new adventure, change my place of employment, or move to a new town. I suppose these would cause me to be nervous and cause me to worry but I am not sure I would be feeling fearful.  I do have a fear of heights. When I step close to the edge up on the mountain my heart races so I suppose I have a fear of falling off even though I know I won’t. I don’t really have a desire to go cliff climbing but should I try it in order to follow my fear?

If you are not feeling fear, or following your fears are you living life to the fullest? How does one “follow” fear? Any thoughts?

p.s. after walking with a friend this morning....maybe I need to change the word to worry as I do worry a lot about life and I think that is different from fear.