Fears

It seems that I go through a "quarter-life crisis" every three years or so. Accordingly, several years ago, I was going through one of these said crises, and had been making some life changes--for the better, of course.

For some reason, I had always been scared of dogs. I'd never been bitten by one--I was just so afraid of even coming close to any dog, big or small. One day during the aforementioned quarter-life crisis, I was standing in my cousins' house contemplating my recent changes and wondering what more to do. Suddenly, their chihuahua approached me and licked my foot, which initially grossed me out. Then I looked down at her, and in that moment I decided to simply not be afraid of dogs anymore. I inhaled deeply, bent down, and picked her up. I exclaimed, "Look! I'm holding Snowflake!" Nobody reacted because picking up Snowflake was such a normal thing to them, but to me, that was a moment of triumph, a moment of empowerment that I vividly recall and happily recount.

Avery, my first dog

Let's backtrack. I was having a conversation with a friend today, and the topics went from "So you didn't grow up with dogs?" to "Why were you so scared of dogs?" Which led me to share that anecdote, which I then extrapolated into a discussion of fears. Which I think might have seemed off-putting because people don't tend to talk about fears because it reveals our vulnerabilities.

However, because I'm all about showing vulnerability and wearing my heart on my sleeve, I went ahead and did some introspection, out loud. And these are my main takeaways from those few minutes:

• I fear disappointment. While I hate to disappoint others, what I have come to truly fear is disappointing myself. I cannot control other people's expectations of me, but I can control my own; and I have to live with my own disappointment that comes from deep within rather than others' that comes from the outside. I don't want get stuck in a cycle of self-disappointment, and I certainly don't want to be disappointed in myself for having tried so hard to meet other people's expectations of me while ignoring my own. In other words, I fear living a life of "What could/ should/ would have happened if...?" and being disappointed in myself for not trying to reach my own expectations. 
• I fear wasted time. Time is incredibly valuable, and I feel it becomes even more so as I get older. Five years from now, I don't want to look back at these past 12 months and think about all the things I could have done "if I'd had the time", but the fact of the matter is, I'd simply wasted the time I'd had. Moreover, I realized that this is why I'm always doing something, and always so irritated about wasting time doing trivial things or waiting around; it's why I'm constantly multitasking and looking for the most efficient method to do something. I want to do as much as I can with the time I have. 
• I fear stasis. I don't want to be in the same place five years from now as I am in the moment. I strive for growth intellectually, emotionally, and physically. I strive for betterment. And all of this requires change. Which is also to say that I fear lack of change, because change is what allows for growth, and if nothing changes--if everything is static--I won't grow, and I'll find myself exactly where I am now, leading to the self-disappointment I fear. 

These are fears that aren't tangible and therefore won't be as easily overcome as my former fear of dogs. Nonetheless, I do believe that they can be overcome, because few things are impossible, and I have unlimited control over my own thoughts and actions.