Switching Out Our Fears
For Something Better
Welcome to the first fresh day of our new Beaver Moon!1 A time for shoring up our homes for the winter to come. To stock up on physical and spiritual fuel to warm ourselves in the coming cold. To put ourselves in order, for dwelling in the peace and love to come.
Last night, while my daughter and husband were out trick-or-treating in short sleeves, I watched Dune Two on fast forward. It’s my way of taking in the gist of a film I haven’t the interest in watching leisurely. A video clip about fear enticed me to know the storyline.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” - Frank Hebert, Dune
It seemed an apt use of Halloween night, after lighting our jack-o-lantern before the raccoons finish devouring it. The blowing wind woke me up early this morning, emphatically ushering out the last couple of record-setting 70+ degree days here in western New York. Between the conspiratorial social buzz about our unseasonably warm temperatures, the questioning or lecturing about whether Halloween is ok to celebrate or not, and what to anticipate in our country this time next week, I find myself noticing the way we collect and hold onto fears as adults.
To contemplate the feelings of my body in the context of what’s happening around me in the natural world helps inform my perspective, as I process what it all means to me and how I feel about it all. Growing up in Alaska I have a rich relationship with seasonal changes, one I have cultivated over the decades. It makes sense that we dwell in fear when we’re disconnected from what fear means to us. Our biologic inheritance has persisted thanks to the ancestors before us who anticipated, prepared for, and survived, the coming storms. There’s something useful in feeling fear to motivate and focus us in our actions.
How do we evaluate what’s going on within our self, in a modern world that seems to swirl and storm around us in constant uncertainty under someone else’s control?
Are we choosing to mind fear thoughtfully?
There is an Aesop Fable about the grasshopper who does not hustle with the ants to prepare for winter, only plays and sings all summer, finding himself hungry when the weather turns cold2. There is also the children’s story Frederick by Leo Lionni about a field mouse who does not gather up the nuts, wheat, and straw his fellows do, but collects sun rays, colors, and words with which to regal them through winter evenings.3
It’s all about your values, the meaning you make of your world, and the purpose you choose to pursue in this lifetime.
To what do you choose to subject yourself to?
When you feel positive about the choices you make, the choices that others make rattle you less. When you focus on your process, the outcome becomes less significant. By learning what it takes to be comfortable in your own skin, you can be more at ease with how others choose to be in theirs. As social beings, we must learn to cultivate both our own inner space and our relationship with the other. Society is built on the exchange between the smallest units: the relationship we have with ourself, and the one we have with another. Our capacity for relationship, for peace and love, is wholly dependent on the values each person fortifies within themselves.
The self is one be-ing in relationship with another. Our relationships form our society. Our group’s identity is made up of the amalgamation of our many social relationships between our many individual parts. Our social group’s identity is the effect of our many shared values, for better or worse. As our values shift, our society and every institution within it, shifts with the tide.
Live by your values. Let others live by theirs. Time demonstrates which values, of the many, serve us better, as part of humanity. When one is willing to lie, to falsely represent who one is and has been, to others, in exchange for maintaining your comforts, you sacrifice your sovereign agency. You forfeit the good path for the seemingly easier path.
You loose your freedom to grow.
There are families and spouses who wish to keep current dynamics the way they are. Parents who are openly hostile to a different way of being. There are those who consider compassion useful in theory, but never implement to know what it requires, what it causes, and how much is to be learned in the process. To do so would upend their livelihood. And they’re just not willing to reevaluate for the sake of something better.
They’d rather hold on to their current junk, than trade out and scale up for something better.
Our fears are embedded in our addiction to our comforts, never allowing us to know and experience our capacity to be alive in the uncertainty.
We can choose to be different. Or not.
“Good government never depends upon laws”, or “those who administer that machinery” but “upon the personal qualities of those who”4 choose to be governed by moral laws rather than systems of oppression and fear.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there”. -Rumi
Come celebrate all 12 Moons of the year through story, craft, music, and community. The 2024 journey is in progress, but doors open to the 2025 Journey on November 1st! Join thousands of families as we journey through a lunar lit year filled with moon magic. The Kids Moon Club is a lunar focused framework that invites your family to slow down, look up, and connect to your nearby nature. https://wilderchild.com/pages/kids-moon-club
“Good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.” - Frank Hebert