Gaining Perspective

60: (November 2022)

Fear is such a relative thing. For example, when I was growing up, and well into my 20s and 30s, I was terrified of playing the piano in front of any type of audience. It was a definite drawback since I had entertained the idea of going into music professionally. When I went through a divorce in my 40s, that fear went out the window, and I began enjoying sharing my love of music. The fear of making a mistake or people not liking my compositions was so minuscule compared to all the life challenges I was facing; the newer, bigger challenges apparently crowded out some of the old fears that I had been holding onto.

Now in my 60s, I generally have far fewer fears than I did earlier in my life. I actively worked on ridding myself of whatever was scaring me on my life’s journey — along with cultivating a sense of gratitude on a daily basis — and it worked! So does growing older; it’s a good feeling to have made it through life this far. Minor concerns fall into perspective more readily, because there are so many more data points to consider. Many things I used to worry about no longer seemed worth the energy they took to dwell upon and eventually faded away.

Now, at this stage of life, more and more of my contemporaries are confronting troubling health problems, and I am close to several people faced with life-threatening illnesses. That’s where fear makes its final stand to win you over and disable your life, to be in charge. If you’re fortunate enough to have been on this earth for six or more decades, you realize that the stakes have become higher, and everything else was practice for dealing with these enormous life and death issues.

Yet as with all fears, whether big or small, the same choice presents itself once again: give in to the fear or conquer it, moment by moment, day by day. I have profound admiration for those faced with life’s most difficult challenges who repeatedly choose love and laughter instead of giving in to fear, celebrating each day for the gift that it is. We’ll all walk in those shoes someday; in the meanwhile, I’ll continue practicing gratitude in order to fortify myself for whatever life has in store for me in the decades to come.

40: (November 2002)

I have become something of a dog fanatic since our beloved dog entered our lives three years ago. This prompted the addition of our second dog, and then two horses were added to the menagerie for the girls. Three ducks, six tropical fish, and four African dwarf frogs round things out. A few days ago, a mouse joined the group. Only, he was uninvited.

I have been struggling to overcome a mouse phobia for many years. I try to use unwelcome experiences with mice (and rats), to uncover and confront the root of my fear. Case in point, a few weeks ago, I found a drowned mouse in the horses’ water bucket. Rather than ask someone to get rid of it for me, I forced myself to really look at it, tried to muster some compassion for its life and end, and then hoisted it unceremoniously into the woods. I consider that large progress. This week, I feel there must be some cosmic reason for my general animal situation, for it appears to be challenging me on a grand scale, with the newly arrived mouse threatening to put me over the edge.

First, a deer ripped down half of my electric fence in the night; my older horse went lame the next day, presumably because there was some sort of panic during the fence incident and she either got kicked or fell. In an unrelated event, my other horse decided he was a bronco and bucked my friend off, hurting her back. Then, my little, white, adorable dog who looks like a stuffed animal that has come to life, emitted a horrifying, thick, green, slimy substance from some orifice of her body (impossible to detect which), onto the only expensive piece of furniture in the house. And then, I found a mouse running into my study in broad daylight.

The mouse might have been the final straw; I never did find him. But I realized the mouse is really the least of my problems. Thankfully, my friend’s back was not seriously hurt after the fall from our horse. Our other horse is being treated for her injuries, and it looks like she’ll be okay. The electric fence is mended, and I’m keeping the horses in their stalls at night to prevent any further deer-related nocturnal mishaps. My little dog hasn’t exploded again, and I was able to clean the furniture reasonably well. So when I take it all into perspective, a missing mouse is a very tiny unresolved problem. Remind me of that the next time he turns up unexpectedly.

60-40:

There are fears that seem irrational, like my fear of rodents, and then there are the existential types of fear that stem from the ‘what ifs’ that are focused on future scenarios. This type of fear works hard to pull us out of the present, even though the present moment is usually much easier to deal with than the future scenarios that the ‘what ifs’ conjure.

Perhaps that’s where prayer or meditation work their real magic, bringing you back to your center, to your breath, to the here and now. Maybe it takes a lifetime to figure out how to circle back to the present, this moment where the peace within whispers that all is well. A true thanksgiving.