THE NARRATIVE ARC

The Face of Fear Is in the Mirror

Please ignore my snarling

I may have heard too many Grimm’s Fairy Tales or watched too many episodes of Lassie, but my greatest fear as a child was wolves (beating out quicksand).

When I was a toddler I also dreamt that I was standing on my bed when I saw a black wolf charging across the yard at me. I was terrified and in the dream I dove onto my bed, startling myself awake. More than 60 years later I still remember it.

As a man of a certain age, my greatest fears now concern my competency. I don’t have the physical strength I once took for granted. I wonder if there is such a thing as quadrifocals. My hearing is an echo, and my fumble fingers are more “buttery” than ever. But, it is the mind fumbles that frighten me the most.

It’s not just the old dog trying to learn new tricks. It’s the old dog forgetting tricks and all that it presages. Every fork that falls from my arthritic hand and every phone number that slips from my misty brain are annoying enough, but it’s the dark wolf lurking behind them, smiling, ears forward, its head tilted as if to say, “I can wait.”

“Piss off, Lobo!”

Fear stimulates the flight or fight reaction. I’m not going to flee an inanimate object, or some specter of my imagination. That leaves “fight”, and that means anger, and cursing.

Anger is just fear, manifested. Of course, this doesn’t faze the inanimate object or the specter in the least, but it can affect those around me. Outbursts are like a shotgun blast in a crowded room. Even though the anger is self-directed at my clumsiness or fuzzy moments, there is collateral damage.

The moment itself is not even the most bothersome thing. What I hate most is how it changes my thinking about trying new things. I find myself pulling back from or avoiding certain activities for fear that I won’t be able to do whatever it is to my satisfaction or sense of élan.

For example, tonight my wife and I plan on going to an ex-pat meet-up at a bar in Merida, Yucatan. I don’t mind meeting new people, but I know I’m going to struggle hearing what’s said to me in a noisy bar. My blank look is not my best feature. I’m inclined not to go, but I will confront my fear rather than be penned in by it.

I learned this valuable lesson from Göd.

Göd, Hungary, that is.

My wife and I were doing a month-long home swap with a family from that Budapest suburb. At the time, I was overcoming some physical limitations, plus the awareness of these limitations. One weekend my wife was traveling to Prague, leaving me alone. I’d already arranged to meet an internet friend in downtown Budapest, which required me to make the excursion without my “wing-woman”.

I felt nearly paralyzed at the prospect. I made a list of my fears. It was an 800-meter walk to the train station on bad legs. The central train station in Budapest is complex and difficult to navigate if you don’t know the language, which I didn’t. I wasn’t sure I could find the meet-up spot. I’d heard cab drivers there can wolfishly take advantage of the ignorant or unwary.

There were so many potential mistakes I could make, and who knew how these might compound. That’s the problem with having too much imagination. For me, it’s not the fear of the unknown so much as the fear of the partially known, with my mind filling in all the blanks in an unhelpful way. I’ve written elsewhere about Fear waiting to meet you at the crossing points between where you are and where you want to be. Would it keep me away?

I sucked it up and went. Even though I limped the whole time and made almost every mistake that I was afraid I’d make, I still made it to the rendezvous and had a great time. My courage was boosted. I had successfully dealt with every situation that had arisen when I had been afraid I wouldn’t be able to. Suck it, Lobo.

And then I had to return to Göd.

That 800-meter walk between the station and the house was easy enough in broad daylight, I simply followed the sidewalk that tunneled through thick branches and bushes, providing a shady stroll. Coming home, however, there was minimal street lighting. To take advantage of the light, such as it was, I’d need to walk on the narrow street — and that felt dangerous based on how I’d seen drivers bombing down that road before. The alternative was to walk through the sidewalk tunnel where there was no light except for what came from my phone and reflected in the sweat glistening on my forehead.

Here’s what you need to know about Hungary, or at least this part of it. Every home is surrounded by a big fence with a large dog inside it. It is security at its most basic and effective. Dozens of homes lined that stretch of tunnel, with the fences just inches from my right shoulder and the dogs just a few inches on the other side of the fence.

Secure in their domain, you’d hope the dogs would be chill, “Yo, strange-smelling stranger, S’up?”

Instead, it was, “Who goes there? I kill you! I KILL YOU!” Of course, the alert went all the way along my route, each dog trying to outdo its neighbor. There was one beast that, I swear, growled both while exhaling and inhaling, an especially slavering sound much like a werewolf. With the darkness and the foliage on the fences, I couldn’t see the actual animals — or if there were any breaks in the fence ahead.

The amazing thing was that I didn’t feel any fear. I, the kid who dreaded wolves coming out of the woodwork, or woods, and perhaps dragging me into quicksand, was more annoyed than terrorized by that mangy gantlet. The things I’d gone through in the past 20 years or so, and especially in the previous two, had given me new perspectives and a greater degree of trust.

It wasn’t until I was safely back in the house that night that I saw the connection between my childhood fears and the fears I’d had earlier in the day. Fear can cause us to lose our self-control and our moral courage in the face of it.

Edwin Lewis Cole once wrote Fear is the belief that something you cannot see will come to pass. Faith is the belief that something you cannot see will come to pass. Which will you choose to ‘believe’?

I have experience in putting certain fears behind me. Now I need this experience to help remind me that it isn’t about an absence of fear, but the mastery of it that shapes my life, including these unfortunate outbursts generated by fear of not being able to handle what comes my way, now that I know its source.

Why should I be afraid? We will go to the ex-pat meet-up tonight in this foreign land. I will work on making my blank look more interesting. I will not flee the battle. I will keep the wolves at bay. I will go with Göd and God.