Abandon all HOPE

This is actually an note about fear. Hope just gets caught up in the crossfire.

I fought stress and worry my entire career. It’s interesting how being and adult and trying to find your way in the world is a surprisingly stressful thing to do. My way was to build models and prototypes for other designers. This was after being a technical director for several theaters and doing some occasional design work. I am only sharing this to say that we all have unique personalities and desires and I was determined to do exactly what I enjoyed and was good at. I did work at other shops while learning the finer points of model making but was always unhappy when someone put their name on my work. I decided that wanting to build models was not enough, I needed to start my own business doing it. Diane, - who’s background was in art - and I learned a tiny bit about running a business and then went for it. 35 years later was retired after a fairly successful run.

I speak of this background as an intro to fear. The larger we got, the more people we hired, the more unique pressures made themselves known. I had many sleepless nights and imagined many disasters along the way. I actually tried to start a “worry” group at church. We met a couple of times and it made me think more deeply about what was going on with me when I was worried.

I came to a couple of conclusions that helped - but not entirely - me get though some tough times. My big revelation was that worry and fear is always about the future. And although I did spend some time as a magician in my youth, I never was a fortune teller.

The events causing fear feel like they are happening right now they are NOT. The disaster may have happened, but is has literally happened in my mind rather than in reality. Every night that I lay there awake, I was fearing what was going to happen in the morning. The morning had not happened yet so it was my imagination keeping me awake and I have a deep imagination. I would run through as many possible outcomes as I could think of, but of course it is the middle of the night and none of those things have yet happened.

During my worry group I tried an exercise.

I would think of the last, most stressful time that I could remember. I would try to remember all of the things that I imagined would happen. Then I would think about what actually happened. No matter how many bizarre or realistic imaginings I came up with the night before. NONE of them were anything like what actually happened. It didn’t matter how many unique disasters I could image, reality was always more creative that I was. I am not saying that what happened was “better” than what I imagined although it often was. Better or worse, all of my worry did not begin to prepare me for the reality.

If I had a crystal ball and could actually see the future I suppose I could prepare myself for it. Since I don’t have that skill, my stress did me no actual good. What it did do was hurt me. I lost sleep, I am sure my health suffered, and I really was not having fun at all.

Since I realize that I cannot imagine the future in any helpful way. I thought that I would give up worry entirely. It didn’t work that way. I think worry comes from the lizard part of my brain along with lust. It is a part of my brain that I don’t control very well, if at all. Worry still sneaks up on me and before I know it I am back in my cycle of imagining the future, knowing full well how useless this activity is. It does help that I know I am being foolish and I have leaned not to take myself very seriously but I have not given up worry entirely.

Now for the bad news.

The realization that fear is all about the future and that the future is a complete unknown reaches out and strikes down HOPE. There is no difference between projecting the horrors that could happen to you or projecting the wonderful events that could possibly occur. Fear and Hope are two sides of the same coin. A coin that is made entirely of fools gold.

I now try my best to be in the moment and not project my will onto the future. Wishing for events to lean my way or fearing that they wont are both activities that are not useful in my life. I can’t get rid of them completely but it is very zen to try.

Craig