Does FEAR drive you?

I was thinking about fear the other day and how fear drives about 98% of the population's actions (more stupidly by electing George Dubbya Bush to a second term...he injected fear of terrorism into the public and convinced them he was the Superman to drive it away).  But politics aside...

Fear comes in a plethora of forms: being genuiely afraid of something (flying, spiders, creepy crawlies), having an irrational sense of consequences (if I move to a Third World country, I will get malaria), even attachment of material items (being afraid of losing something).  I can't lie and say I've never been afraid of anything, but for the most part, I laugh in the face of fear ha ha HAAA!!!

I fully admit that I was afraid to move to Southeast Asia, one of the stupid reasons it took so long for me to get here. 

When I first had the idea of learning to teach English abroad as a foreign language, I was nearing my late 20's.  Already I was feeling that if I went further abroad than England (where I currently was) for a year, I would be closer to 30 and therefore making it even harder to meet a dude, the old ball-and-chain if you like.  So I put off the teaching idea in hopes that something better would come along.  Nothing better ever came along.  The dude didn't either.

Then the fear of what life would be like in Thailand took over.  All I had ever seen on TV of Thailand were bamboo shacks crawling with cockroaches, leaky roofs, people who ate weird things, freaky natural disasters - tsunamis, earthquakes, bird flu (I know bird flu isn't a natural disaster)....I was so scared of living in a place that had roaches crawling around, mayhaps snuggling into my ears as I slept at night that I never made an acutal commitment to come here.

By the time I was more committed to coming here, I was even older - again increasing the difficulty of meeting said dude mentioned above.  At some point, I'm not sure when (maybe after my umpteenth rejection from the umpteenth dude I fancied), I gave up on the hopes of finding love.  I realized I really am fine by myself, sure it would be nice to have a companion, but I think I wanted it more to be 'normal' in the eyes of society (fuck you, society).  I just had to get over the fear of living in a place where roaches and spiders and creepy things may be hiding in dark corners. 

Thank goodness I did, seriously - you can't believe everything you see on TV.  I have no roaches in my apartment, but I do have a spider in my bathroom that I've named Charlotte (a-la Charlotte's Web!), I do get some annoying ants, but you get those everywhere, an occasional gecko will make his way into my room, but soon enough he makes his way back out.  I feel this makes my room sound dirty.  It's not.  It's acutally quite clean and comfortable for the most part.

My fear of Thailand was completely irrational and only hindered me from seeing more of the world sooner than I would have liked.  I had heard the song Drive by Incubus hundreds of times, but it wasn't until about 2 years ago that I really listened to it and it helped and empowered me:

"Sometimes, I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear

And I can't help but ask myself how much I let the fear

Take the wheel and steer

It's driven me before

And it seems to have a vague, haunting mass appeal

But lately I'm beginning to find that I

Should be the one behind the wheel."

Thank you, Brandon Boyd for writing a beautiful, empowering song.



Don't let fear drive you, it's only holding you back from something that's probably pretty amazing.

Happy (fearless) Trails!
LG

Soundtrack for this blog: Drive by Incubus!