For a long time, I’ve carried a bunch of cards in my backpack with sayings from Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings, memorizing and repeating one on the way back from each hike to prevent the squirrelly thoughts from circling. Although the statement above is from the 1933 inauguration of President Franklin Roosevelt, the sentiment is similar to many of the thoughts on my cards. Now that girls are not routinely instructed in fear—of mice, spiders, snakes, and the unknown—our native courage is much in evidence and perhaps as a result, I’m less accepting of timidity in its female form.
This morning as, card in hand, I was going back down a particularly steep and rocky trail, I felt the presence of someone behind me and turned to see an attractive young woman and an older man standing as through frozen. “My dog is friendly,” I called to them; Pip is a pit bull and due to the undeserved bad reputation we’ve given this breed, people are sometimes afraid of him.
The couple remained frozen. “I’m frightened of dogs!” the woman called.
“Do you want me to put him on the leash?”
She did and I did and then the couple cautiously slid by us.
I suggested that she pat Pip but she said she was too terrified and I found myself feeling impatient. Are we responsible for our fears? And if we are, are we obliged to do something about them?
As they passed, I remembered that just before the encounter, I’d been repeating one of the Hanh verses:
“I vow to look with the eyes of love and the heart of understanding.
I vow to listen with clear ears and the mind of compassion,
Bringing peace and joy into the lives of others.”
I certainly had not brought peace and joy into this woman’s life.
We all fail our vows, probably more frequently than we want to admit, but this failure particularly troubled me. Didn’t this woman deserve my sympathy?
Well…
I am so passionate about our strength and confidence as women; I’ve seen examples of it so frequently, especially in the last thirty years since the women’s movement made courage not only possible but probable, that I may have lost my capacity for accepting or understanding fear. After all, strength depends to some degree on privilege, on living next to wilderness as I do and having the leisure to explore it as I have for the past three decades. Hiking increases strength, confidence and endurance. Perhaps this stranger had seldom had my opportunity.
And I’ve never been bittern, although my neighbor has a snarling dog I don’t like, and encounters with her intimidate me. Can I build some empathy on this experience?
Well, no.
I still find fear shameful, even inexcusable.
Yet there are experiences that frighten me, even various conditions of travel that most women probably take for granted. But I would never expect anyone to sympathize with the slight degree of panic that visits me in all enormous airports.
I also know from long experience that those of us who’ve been starved for love—and I don’t mean romantic love but the love of the universe, the love of God—have learned that weakness and fear call forth a protective instinct in some men, which courage never does. And that can feel like love.
But most powerful is the sentiment at the top of the card of vows I broke so quickly: NOURISHING HAPPINESS.
There are two quotations about fear that have popped up regularly in my musings—one from the Dalai Lama and the other from House Master (Eliot House, Harvard) John H. Finley: The Dalai Lama said his greatest fear was that he would fail to love all his enemies. Finley said his greatest fear was that his son might think his experiences were real. Rupert Spira has helped allay my fears through his You Tube presentations of “non-duality.” But I’m still torn by the possibility that I might never resolve the great tension I feel as between solipsism and pantheism.
True fear from our intuition/feelings that something is amiss must be acknowledged. I am 65 years old. I was never taught to be fearful of bugs, spiders, snakes, or any other sort of creepy crawly. Except the human creepy crawlies. Even then I feel I can go toe to toe with anyone if I have to because of what they are displaying to me as “this person appears to want to hurt me in some way.” I am learning that shame is not helpful at all. We are humans and we all have our “deals”. There is nothing inexcusable. I can give a sympathetic eye to anyone’s situation. Why not? We are here to help each other and all creation.
Namaste to y’all.