Lately I have been reflecting on fear and how it has become less of a motivator, or rather, demotivator of mine. As a child, I remember fear keeping me from doing things that I had wanted to do. I never liked this feeling. Some of my earliest memories and the reflections on them are on how I should have done things that scared me. Examples include not jumping over a laser when on a visit to Cosi Museum while on a trip for a friend’s birthday when I must have been 8, not going down the big slide at Atlantis a couple of years later, and, much more recently (and bizarre), not shearing a sheep with big rusty scissors while studying abroad in Scotland. All of these experiences and more stuck with me for far too long. “Why didn’t I try to jump over that laser with my friends? If the other 8 year-olds can do it, why can’t I? You wanted to try to shear that sheep, you’re in the Highlands of Scotland. Why can’t you shear the damn sheep, what were you afraid of? You weren’t going to hurt the sheep”
These were specific moments of fright, but doubt also kept me from habits or behaviors as well. Not going to certain social events, joining clubs in college, martial arts classes, or starting to learn chess, just to name a few. The problem with these things is that I wanted to do them. Allotting mental space to these desires but refusing them caused pain every time I thought of them. Everytime I swiped by the Chess.com app when I first downloaded it, I would feel a pang of shame. “What if I am not any good at chess? Maybe that means I am not smart. I can’t let people think that I am not smart by being bad at chess.”
When I contemplated fear, I noticed that the pain of not doing something that I desired was far worse than the potential embarrassment of being a novice or of failing. Still, fear or doubt can come on quite strongly so having some sort of technique in order to overcome it would be necessary.
Sometime during 2018 or 2019, I heard of a method used to help people get over phobias. The idea was that, if someone was afraid of snakes, maybe they could get over it through controlled exposure to snakes. They would first look at pictures of snakes, then see a live snake in another room, be in the same room while the snake was in a cage, be in the same room as a person holding the snake, and finally hold the snake themselves. This slow build up allowed people to change their mind about the potential dangers of snakes and about how they identified as a person who could not be around snakes. An interesting consequence of overcoming this specific phobia was that researchers found participants in the study to be more willing to take risks in other areas of their life. It appeared that fear is not specific to one thing but a general feeling that can be out of balance.
This connected with me. Knowing that I had the ability to be a less fearful person was really motivating. I didn’t start looking at pictures of snakes or big slides at Caribbean resorts, but I did strive to make life decisions without being deterred by fear. I think acceptance of the scary has made me a braver person. One of the first measurable examples of challenging fear after making a conscious effort to do so was getting over a mild fear of the ocean. In Casablanca, I lived a 20 minute walk from the Atlantic Ocean and went to the beach around once a week. Getting in the ocean often allowed me to relax my fear of sharks and giant mollusks. Later in the year, I would assuredly climb and dive from rocks into the ocean and eventually even tried surfing. I had become a noticeably more confident person in the water.
The first half of this year has seen me “come into my own'' in a number of ways. The following highlights a few situations that happened this year where I was challenged by fear and feel as though I have grown from them.
Miami Beach
In January, Luciana and I visited Miami. We had a nice trip, but weather kept us from the beach until our final day there. Adriana (Luciana’s sister), Luciana, and I found a spot on the beach in front of some of the many hotels in South Beach. We hurried to get in the water and experience a few hours of being on the coast before flying to land-locked Bolivia. While there, Luciana noticed a lone man in his 50’s with a phone camera pointed towards us. She watched for long enough to get the impression that this man was taking pictures or filming us (probably wasn’t too interested in me).
In order to confirm, I pretended to be on a phone call and walked behind him. He noticed this and began to watch me and hide his phone screen. It was such an incredibly obvious display of getting caught in the act. I returned to the girls and we discussed what we should do while he returned to pointing his camera at us. This was pretty stunning as he seemed not to feel any guilt about his actions nor fear of getting into an exchange with us.
Now at this point we felt something had to be done. Luciana is quite good at confrontation, and I normally would have deferred to her telling someone off. However, I was clearly the most intimidating of the three of us and had already been proven to not be the one he was interested in. It seemed that we were either to leave or I would need to confront this guy. So I went.
On the approach, I remember him doing some scrambling to pack up or put his phone away. Although I don’t know exactly what was said, let me give a recount of how I remember the conversation:
“What are you doing? Are you taking pictures of them?”
“No, fuck you. Get away from me.”
“Can I see your phone?”
“No, fuck you, asshole.”
“Are you taking pictures of them?”
“No, fuck you. I was taking pictures of the cruise ship.”
“Can I see your phone?”
“Here, asshole. Look, I was taking a picture of the cruise ship”
He showed me his phone where there was a zoomed in view of a cruise ship in the distance in the background of one of the pictures that he had recently taken. I tried to zoom out to see the entire image or scroll to another one of the pictures that he had taken recently to gather evidence for our case. He ripped the phone away before I could see anything demonstrating to me that he was in fact hiding the rest of the picture and probably several more. He returned to calling me all manner of insults. Adrenaline struck me too.
“Fuck you. Get the fuck out of here. Fuck you!” I responded to whatever he was hurling at me.
I must have repeated myself continuously until he left the beach.
I returned to Luciana and Adriana and was showered in praise. I reflected on this moment often in the beginning of this year. I am thankful that I confronted a difficult situation that I usually would have shied away from, that I did not dole out too harsh a punishment leaving myself with anything to regret, and that I acted only out of just cause.
San Telmo Robbery
I almost want to spare the details of this story as many of those in mine or my parents’ lives will know this story already. However, for those of you that haven’t heard or haven’t heard my side, here it is.
My parents were visiting Buenos Aires from late February to early March of this year to spend my birthday with me and see “my city.” I had been a little worried about how my mom would like the trip as she is not fond of long flights or exits from her well-established routine. Due to this, I tried to cover all the bases before their arrival. In order to ensure that we did not encounter any street crime, I warned both parents not to wear expensive watches nor to take their phones out on the street (Note: I think this is generally good advice for any major city, Buenos Aires is not an extremely dangerous place). I won’t shame my mom again, but she did decide to wear her watch in spite of my warning.
On the second day of their visit, Luciana and I were walking with them in the San Telmo neighborhood after having lunch at a famous food and antique market centered in the neighborhood. Both the areas that we were in that morning are a little bit more dangerous and we were a bit cavalier walking around as obvious tourists. I will admit some fault there. However, the specific walk from the antique market to the Engineering school which we were planning on visiting was only a few blocks away so the walk seemed inconsequential.
In the final block of our short walk, we got staggered by going on a particularly narrow stretch of sidewalk. Luciana and I were in the lead looking across the street towards the Engineering building while my parents were in the back with my mom trailing us all by a few meters. Suddenly, my mom cried out and we turned around to see her being held by a large man. In this instant, I realized that someone was holding onto my mom. I tried to figure out what he was doing. “Does he have a knife? What is he doing? Is he taking her?” Soon after I had looked back, he started to run away. I thought “Okay, good. We are all safe.”
All of a sudden, I saw my dad run after the guy. This was pretty shocking to me as I hadn’t confirmed that the man was not armed. I was worried for my dad. He managed to catch up to the much larger and younger man (assisted by a well-timed stumble by our attacker) and tackle him to the ground. That part of the story is my dad’s, I don’t think there was much fighting on the ground aside from my dad’s finger breaking during the fall. The mugger got up and started running by me and my mom yelled “He’s got my watch, he’s got my watch!” (He had ripped it off of her wrist prior to running off)
“Well, I guess he doesn’t have a knife. I’ll go get him.” So I ran after the thief. I started to yell “Hey! Hey! Hey!” (I wasn’t sure what to yell in Spanish. “Ladron?” I don’t know). I managed to get the attention of a guy walking a big dog and the two of us intercepted the thief from the front and the back after a hot pursuit the length of a block. He was left with nowhere to go, and I restrained him by holding his arms behind his back. He quickly offered up the watch while pleading for us not to call the police.
I took the broken watch back to my family who were all experiencing some form of shock. The police showed up within a minute or two and kept the four of us and our criminal buddy detained for a couple of hours on the sidewalk. Any sort of sympathy for our robber evaporated during this time. We got a good look at him and noticed that his eyebrows were waxed and that he was wearing fairly new Stan Smith Adidas shoes. The police also brought to our attention that he was carrying money that also appeared to have been stolen. We had been robbed by someone who was robbing as a profession. Aside from these little details, our detention went on for far too long and isn’t worth telling.
For my family this was obviously a heavy experience and kept us on our toes for their remaining stay in Buenos Aires. Now I think it's something we can laugh about and my dad can certainly be proud of for years to come. I also am proud of myself. I had never had such an experience in my life. Nothing close to criminal has really happened to me (I’m a fairly large, young man who’s almost always wearing athletic clothing with nothing of value on my person). I know that my late reaction may appear less heroic, and it probably was. But I know I did have the thought about the knife and felt that as long as we were all safe, that we were okay. And once I identified that I wouldn’t be in real danger, I went and got the guy and my mom’s watch. I, once again, did not punish our aggressor by assaulting him. Nothing was left to potentially regret.
The response to fear on that afternoon in San Telmo was purely instinctual. While in Miami, I had the time to plan my approach, to gather the courage to confront someone. Here we had seconds to respond. I learned that I can be brave in an instant if the situation calls for it. I certainly hope that I don’t find myself in a similar situation, but I like knowing that it can be handled.
Asador
After two heavy examples, I want to move onto a lighter note. About a week and a half ago, I hosted an “Asado.” An asado is the Argentine equivalent of a barbecue, but the meat is cooked for a much longer period of time (Nearly 3 hours in my case). I invited 14 friends to come to my building’s multipurpose room and enjoy some meat cooked by me.
Fear took on a different form here. In the past, I would not have invited such a mixed group (they were from 4 distinct parts of my social life) of people to hang out as I would have been afraid that they would not all get along. Previously, I also have shied away from being the one in charge of things. I often leave travel plans to whomever I am traveling with and quite enjoy just being along for the ride. I can be a happy follower, keen on partaking in just about anything that comes our way. Preparing things myself seemed to bring with it the potential to disappoint others. Finally, I would never have invited a large group of people to eat my cooking. I am not well known for my abilities in the kitchen nor on the grill.
I wanted to host something anyway. Why hold onto these fears? I have excellent taste in people, music, food, just about everything (at least in my opinion), why not show off my tastes? Why not bring people together even if they don’t know each other and aren’t guaranteed to become friends?
Since I spent most of my time outside cooking the 16 lbs (7.5 kg) of meat in the cold late June evening, I actually didn’t really know what was going on inside with my guests. Everyone said really positive things as the night went on and in the days to come. The dishes, the cost of the food, and the preparation all was worth it. It was a joy to be around so many people that I have gotten to know over the past couple of years. I plan to do it again when it's a little warmer and more of the party can take place around me, the asador (grill master).
Biking in the City
I hate to add a fourth example. Everything seems to be better as a prime number. Three is the number for lists of things. People also seem to like seven, but asking you to read seven long list items from me is quite the ask. Here is the fourth fear.
During my childhood, we often rode bikes or Razor scooters around the neighborhood. Being from a suburb (Bellefonte, KY) of a small town (Ashland, KY), we didn’t really have much traffic to worry about. Bikes and scooters were a means to have fun but also used as a tool for getting around the neighborhood. Once I was old enough to drive, bikes and scooters lost a lot of their utility.
Despite having very little traffic, leaving our neighborhood via any means of transportation other than a car is not a safe decision (no sidewalk, lots of hills/turns, relatively high speed limit). Urban planning is not always done well. As I had no means of getting accustomed to cycling through a city, I figured that I would never be able to unless under optimal conditions (Amsterdam).
This year, a friend (Jacob) begged me to buy a bike so that we could go bike camping together. I finally caved when he sent me an ad for a used bike being sold for about $200. When I bought it, I had the idea that I would just use it for the bike trips that we plan to do later this year. However, after picking up the bike, I really had to go to the bathroom and the fastest possible way home with a bike was simply to ride it. So I rode home. I was afraid to start, but by the end of the ride I was smiling and excited. Biking the city streets was now a possibility.
I now take the bike out several times a week to go to games of padel, tennis or to meet friends. I get additional exercise, save money (In the long term) by not ubering or taking public transport, and have fun riding. Like each prior example, biking around the city is now something that I know that I am capable of doing and gaining confidence in.
In Conclusion
Now I find myself doing things more easily. I am less prone to put things off or ceding control of group activities. I started painting again, I’ve started to cook regularly, and I am organizing four person games of padel weekly. The more fears that I face, the less that holds me back. That is why I wanted to write this. I felt somewhat of a shift within myself this year. I feel more confident, capable, and ambitious. It feels that I have a stronger sense of control over the direction of my life personally, professionally, and socially. I found that these experiences had helped make that material shift within me and sought to share and celebrate these successes.
I still have things that inspire fear in me (Notably, my upcoming differential equations exam and the visa application process). Nevertheless, I am reminding myself that I can overcome fear and that, when I do, I get closer to living life on my terms. I think the phrase “Do something that scares you everyday” is cliche and ridiculous. It probably has more of a negative effect on us as no one could possibly live up to that standard. Yet I do think forcing oneself to do the things that we think or dream about, regardless of how afraid of them we are, is an integral part of a life well lived.
Fear is the mind killer
Very interesting! Mom(the dummy who wore her Rolex)😳