“There are two basic motivating forces, fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”
― John Lennon

 

For most of us, our innate emotional response to danger, and threatening situations is…fear; a different response than with our everyday concerns.

There are times when silence evokes a fearful inner response and I’ll turn up the stereo, turn on the television, text a friend, just to fill in that overly quiet void.  I will talk to someone in an attempt to fill in that silence but maybe I’m just reluctant to see something and try to avoid these feelings by any available distraction.

Stress…another matter, difficult to pinpoint but, boy, do we know it when we feel it!  I often find myself backed into a corner, pushed beyond all reasonable limits when it comes to coping with any rough situation.  And, yes, I am, very threatened and doubt my ability to deal with a given matter successfully.  I think we all are, at some point.  What happens then is exhaustion and that awful feeling of burnout; the end result becomes a mixture of negative motions mixed with a big dose of cynicism.  For me, at times, and for others, this helps to get through a problem but the down side is with the impact that this chronic stress can have on our health. 

These past months have brought an unwelcome mixture of both fear and stress to everyone just trying to survive the pandemic.  Lost jobs or employment, like mine, which has been scaled down to an almost non-survivable level.  Each day begins with hope that some normalcy will return, each day ends with having that optimism squashed by some news report.  My personal fear is focused on just how long I can be a passenger on this train of uncertainty.

I’d love to have the chutzpah like Rizzo, in “Grease”, when she climbed out the window and said “I’m gonna get my kicks while I’m still young enough to get em!” but, that’s not realistic for me, at this point in my life.  At least the climbing out the window part.    I like working, running in six different directions, juggling schedules and just feeling damn productive in my life.  What I’d like most is to not give a rat’s ass about everything that continues to control life, especially mine, at present and enjoy what’s left of my ride around the sun.

 

From Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop:

               Write a post inspired by the word: stress and…Write about something you are afraid of.