fear – edifiedlistener

Of course the terms I would rather use include trepidation, hesitancy, or reluctance. Fear seems so stark, too strong a word to describe the feeling I get as I marshal my resources, gather my gumption, brace myself and go meet that class. Fear before teaching? Before greeting a boisterous line of bubbly seven year olds or know-no-patience fourth graders? Fear of children seeking the the things that children seek: excitement, fun, attention, distraction, etc? What on earth is there to be afraid of? I stopped saying 'practice makes perfect' because nothing can ever be perfect. I know it's just a saying but it's easy to get attached to the perfect part. I've been practicing showing up for kids for most of my adult years and I am no closer to perfect than when I started. I am practiced. 'Practice makes practiced' is true but has no ring. So there I am, practiced and handling my reservations (there's another nice term) like a too hot potato with no one to toss it to. I appear before students, practiced and masked, moderately prepared, while hoping against hope that the worst that could happen, does not. The worst that could happen is this giant unknown - unpracticed, unrehearsed, unpredictable - that travels with me, never fully identified but weighty nonetheless. Visibly invisible, kind of like my fear (there, I said it!), the giant unknown turns out to be a me rather than a you problem. Turns out, the giant unknown is me. I arrive practiced and masked but know, by chance, by circumstance, by 9:45- the mask may drop, and I shall be revealed - the monster within becomes the monster without- and then we have a real problem on our hands. Routines help. Rituals soothe. Sometimes there's a groove that cradles us all, holds us captive in an engrossing, absorbing kind of way. We run out of time, happily. Sometimes all my practice produces mysteriously inventive interludes; I exceed my wildest expectations. We experience a learning high. We - the kids and I and our ridiculous imaginations - pull it together and pull it off - the impossible possible: A good time, no take-backs. A balancing act, the act of balancing. but that's exactly not it. Balance remains a myth, a thing we talk about in the abstract because we know it hardly exists in reality. I know no balance. I am present and I am praying. My spirit perturbed and jumpy; vigilant and at attention - time seeps through me from one end of class to the other. Not even the illusion of balance, my body performs a lucid survival ethic. I go down on one knee, I stand on my hands, I do cartwheel of uncertainty. My education is physical. Directions, instructions, reminders, requests - a relentless parade of communications. Containers for procedure, often leaky, never airtight. Written, oral; direct, in passing; an elaboration, a gesture. A shopping cart's pile of options, so often an excess. What needs saying can be hard to find. It takes time to dig through all that's there. So I improvise and miss the mark or catch the drift. Hearing and listening are not the same thing. I employ loud music to cover my tracks. What you see is what you hear is what's happening. What is happening? Hello, experience, my old friend, home of all my educated guesses. Even knowing what I know, having seen what I've seen, when the going gets tough, I'm sure that's when you hide. I become a novice all over again. but not young. No, an old and tired and uninspired novice. How it feels to meet my match, to catch the resistance, to counter the pushback. I throw up my shield and appeal to their better angels. From the outside looking in, I am holding my own. I am breathing through the storm. Disaster averted. Miraculously, we are back on track. The fear, the trepidation, the dread, the frightful anticipation - These all reside in me, in my practice. I recently received the most generous valentine from a students who wrote: "You are a great PE teacher and always make the best out of terrible situations." The best out of terrible situations... The fear and the discovery, the fear and the movement, the fear and the next time. make the best out of terrible make, not take; best out of, not best instead of make the best out of terrible. grow alongside fear; change while scared; shift under stress. So this is what it means to be seen.

I think it’s time we had a talk about fear.

Yes, fear. The stuff that makes you afraid,

that provokes anxiety, that keeps you up at night

Or makes it seem impossible to get out of bed.

Fear.

I have a couple of books on the topic.

Whole books dedicated to helping me

cope with,

understand,

manage,

and investigate

my very own special, unique and distinct

fears.

And I’ll be honest,

my fears are not for my safety

or that of my loved ones.

They are not about having enough

of what one needs to survive.

Rather they are more about

being enough.

About my capacity to measure up,

follow through,

deliver as promised,

and smile at the end.

Those nagging fears about

leaving things undone,

failing to finish

in time,

of not satisfying

someone else’s requirements of

my time, energy and talent.

*Suddenly I’m getting all warm

and beginning to perspire under my sweatshirt

as I write this

because fear of telling the truth

sparks a nerve.

There’s something at stake,

something at risk,

something to be afraid of

because that’s how fear works

expertly curving back on itself

always leaving the heavy residue of doubt

and misgivings

and sense of loss.

Isn’t it funny and isn’t it typical

that I would ask myself:

what’s a nice way to end this post?

so no one needs to feel too uncomfortable;

already afraid again

that I might upset the apple cart by

telling you what happens

so often,

so reliably,

so stubbornly

to me.

It’s only fear and it has a name

and so many faces and forms.

My fears like to dress up

and show up in disguise under an assumed name.

I can’t always recognize them at first.

But I can recognize their whispers after a time

and respond accordingly.

Tag: fear

Let’s talk about fear

About Fear