WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU HAD NO FEAR?  Part 1

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I often dream of living a life so profound, of spending my time with the wisest intent, of creating materials that the world will benefit from, to live a life of substance. We all want to be important,and it is rare that we celebrate our successes in private anymore. It has become perfectly normal for us to share a great amount of our lives with each other, to judge who is doing the most. Subsequently we’re stressed, we’re depressed, we worry so much about how the next few years will shape our lives and the person we will become. Do most of us care more about being perceived as successful or actually being successful? If we do not share our success with our twitter and Instagram feed, did it ever really happen?

If you were to ask people of our generation the question ‘what would you do if you had no fear?’, I’m sure a large majority would conjure up images of a life far from their reality, and opportunities that their social stance had not allowed them to access. I can’t answer for anyone but myself, but I know if my fears of money and happiness ceased to exist I would chase dreams that I currently struggle to see a future in. Yet,the biggest killer of the future is fear. The negative voice in your   head telling you that you might not succeed. But what if you did? What if you started turning those questions into ‘but what if I did succeed?’ instead of‘what if I fail?’. I can’t promise that we would automatically be happier, and I can’t say I always listen to my own advice, but it seems so sad that we have only one life and spend a proportion of it not doing the things we really want to do.

I worry about myself, my friends, anyone at this painfully confusing age who has a heart full of compassion. It often feels the world is out to get us. During a period of universal unrest, not only in politics but in the economy, the health sector, the social sector and the environment, we are expected to develop into fully functioning adults ready to tackle the world’s problems passed to us from older generations - who have failed us time and time again. And meanwhile, the declining mental health of the entire nation is so passively overlooked as if it is healthy and natural to carry on while full of anxiety and torment. While it could easily be argued that this is just resilience, and even the most successful people hide their problems, I do think there is something so fundamentally wrong with this.

While I don’t believe in a Christian omniscient God,I found myself praying to some higher being that I would have strength to keep going. I know I am not the only one who often finds life can be just too much.  It is hard to open up and express this feeling, particularly when you see it is a vulnerability and something you yourself don’t quite understand, but I cannot stress enough how important it is to find safe spaces in your loved ones, in hobbies, in your favourite book and your favourite artist, in your favourite country walk, in places where what feels like constant oppression cannot reach you. No matter what you are going through, the world keeps on spinning and the sun keeps on rising. You have time.

Sometimes the easiest way to open up is to talk about something you have experienced, the simplest of things, and how you reacted to it. While deadheading the plants in my room I found that my oldest plant had essentially pushed its own roots out of the soil, while the off cuttings around it had blossomed and grown massively, and I found myself in tears at what seemed to me at the time like the most profound sacrifice – that this plant I had cared for for 7 years had sacrificed itself in order for it’s babies to grow even stronger. And I laugh at myself for being so easily moved to tears, but equally I understand that I am just sensitive and think the act of love and compassion is the most beautiful and poignant thing.

I feel I am writing this more so for myself than anyone else, as recently I’ve felt more confused and frustrated than ever, but I know full well that everyone is fighting their own battles and I think what I am stressing most is that we need to have each other’s backs. We’ve all experienced how uncertain and unforgiving current times can be, and now it’s more important than ever to look after each other. And to ask yourself, ‘what would you do if you had no fear?’.

And what if you just did it anyway?