That Thing We Fear
October 10th, 2022 by admin
JANET AND I recently enjoyed a small gathering among friends in Winston Salem. By chance, three of the invited husbands are from West Virginia, including me.
We talked about our growing up days, among other things, and the comments our parents would say to us to make us mind them. A spouse asked: “What was that place your mother used to say you would go if you kept acting up?” At which point the three of us from West Virginia said spontaneously: “Prunytown!” Prunytown was the name of the state reform school where unruly kids would go for serious offenses.
Child psychologists today would likely tell us this was a flawed approach to proper discipline of your children, but it was what it was back then. And most every one of my West Virginia buddies reading this heard a similar story from their parents, since they were some level of knuckle-head boys, too. (Like me, I am told.)
But my West Virginia friends and I at that gathering all turned out ok. All of us went to college and graduate school, we have good families and worthwhile careers, so some good came of it.
But that word, Prunytown, lives on, decades after our youth, to strike fear in our memory. And fear, and fear of the future, can control us in ways we do not fully realize.
Most of us grow up to outdistance our childhood fears. An accompanying corollary emotion, courage, can help us along if we harness it at those forks in the road when we face Dame Fear again.
My West Virginia friends at that gathering had harnessed their courage to overcome their fear to leave their family’s safe, secure, and successful businesses to embark on another path, the ministry, looking beyond the pursuit of the crown of the realm to the crown of their faith. A rare thing, that. But leading their lives to their own definition of success, the only one which matters.
Others we know may consider their own new career path, but their fear pauses them. They settle for the quiet comfort of a known path, rather than gathering the strength to find their own new path.
Studies show that many among us are not fully satisfied with our careers, despite the status of them and their financial rewards. This includes many professionals, including a share of attorneys. There is something missing, it seems, for many.
But the stout of heart sometime choose to strike out on their own. With a solid plan and sufficient financial staying power, they make it to the other side, where they find the cherished crown of the heart. Which gives them courage in waiting for the next fear life will bring their way.
Andy Griffith teaches his son, Opie, an important lesson about courage. In one episode Opie is being bullied by an older kid, who shakes him down for a nickel on the way to school each day or face the consequences.
Andy teaches Opie how to stand up for himself. Opie gets the threatened black eye because he will not give the bully the nickel. He has the strength not to back down. He shows his dad his black eye, his own mark of courage, and proclaims proudly, “Ain’t it a Bute, Pa?”
EVERYONE READING THIS can recall those times when you demonstrated courage at a challenging time, and you stood up for yourself when it mattered. A deposit of strength in your memory to help you through life’s next challenges.
But there is another fear which follows us which reaches far into our lives. And its impact is more destructive than we realize.
Our feelings about old hurts, wrongs, grievances, and resentments to which we feel we are justly entitled often follow us in life, although they are not out in the open to other people. But they leave a mark in their path. And they can give even the most outwardly successful people a burden to carry.
Yet we are often afraid to lay down our hurt to the other party for fear it will not be reciprocated or even rebuffed. Our pride is not going to let another put down happen to us. What happened to us was not fair.
Sometimes we don’t try hard enough to put them behind us. And sometimes we like to hold onto them, the truth be told, revisiting that old hurt, allowing ourselves to relive it, and deepening the cut of that experience. I bet you know which ones you carry. I know mine.
Literature sometimes underscores the challenges of this unconscious effect. In “Catch 22,” Joseph Heller artfully amalgamates into vivid characters and events our fears and foibles.
Hungry Joe is one of those characters in this parody. He collects lists of diseases in alphabetical order so he can put his finger without delay on any one he wants to worry about each day.
But sometimes “our lives are diminished by judgment more than disease, "observed Dr. Rachel Remen, author of "Kitchen Table Wisdom." Many of us catalog our old emotional hurts and grievances, diseases, too, like Hungry Joe. We have them at the ready when we want to revisit them.
Most of us who are married or who have a significant other in our lives know only too well the importance of learning to forgive and forget hard arguments or real fusses. The fair/unfair calibration should not control our decision to continue to carry them. We learn to give them short shrift.
These burdens are often harder to unload when they get more rooted, however. They do not go willingly into that good night.
But the lives of others give us some instruction if we have the strength to listen.
RUDY TOMJANOVICH was a successful pro basketball player who was punched without justification years ago in a pro basketball game by a player on the opposite team. The physical damage from that blind-side attack ended Tomjanovich’s professional playing career. The large monetary verdict rendered in his favor vindicated Tomjanovich, but it did not give him his life back. He got his life back, he said, because he forgave the other player.
He was asked: How were you able to forgive the player who ended your career? Tomjanovich’s comments demonstrate wisdom in its purest form. He said: “I didn’t do it for him, I did it for me. I did it so I could be free.”
The life of Nelson Mandela sets an example as well about giving up an old hurt. He was jailed unfairly for twenty years, until his struggle caught the world’s eye.
Upon his release from prison, he was asked: How do you avoid being bitter? He said: "Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”
But sometimes our guide to a better metaphorical sight line comes from the simplest of life’s experiences.
Some years ago, a warehouse worker at my dad's furniture company and my dad were loading a truck with furniture late at night. My dad observed--it would be interesting if all the furniture which had passed through this loading dock door was stacked up in one pile. The warehouse worker, visualizing the thought through the limiting lens of fatigue, said: "One pile would not hold it all.”
For all our outward signs of success, behind the mask, the truth be told, lies our tally of accumulated wrongs and resentments. And maybe the warehouse worker’s view was correct, after all. One pile will not hold them all.
We have trash days for so many things: regular trash, recyclable trash, and bulky items. Maybe we should have a giveaway bag to bundle up those old hurts and resentments and take our otherwise successful lives out of the roaming range of their sinister signal.WHAT I HAVE LEARNED about life on the way to the courthouse is this:
Fear is a very real thing in life, whatever name we give it, although we do not like to admit it follows us. We cannot allow all the good in our lives to be dragged down by our fear to let go of our pride and old hurts. Like Opie and that famous athlete, we must stand up, and give them up, for ourselves. The fair/not fair test is not much help in this venue of life.
We all have to determine what our life’s work is going to be, and where we are going to do it. But our choice will find its way to our life’s Ledger of Regret if we do not follow our mature instincts to overcome our fear to be and do what we want to be and do.
And we have to decide the frame of how we do our life’s work.
But what we do with our accumulated grievances, especially our feelings about old hurts to which we feel we are entitled, may be among the most important choices of all. If we overcome our fear to give them up and stand up for ourselves, we are headed to the only place worth going. Where Shakespeare tells us we will find life’s crown called content.
I bet we know where to start on our list. But do we have the courage to do so?
Mike Wells
Posted in: On the Way to the Courthouse