“What Fear Does Not Know.”

 Z,

It is important to know that feeling we call fear will show up in almost
everything. There is no progress without the counterpoint of fear. It is how we
measure how much we care about an outcome. It does not feel good. It never
will. It masquerades in seemingly immutable things like “logic” and “safety”
and, even, “wisdom”. It shows up in panic and anxiety and rash decisions and,
with enough time given, can bring you to your knees or stop your beating heart.

Yet, it does not know you. It has no idea how far you can go or how low
you have been. It is an unthinking presence, trapped in your DNA and only has
the past as a guide. It has no sense of your future, it cannot measure your
talent and it cannot reach the high point of your own experience. The best
things you will ever do are in spite of fear not because of it. It has helped
no one to become who they truly are. It never will.

It does not determine outcomes either. Fear will not help you do
anything. It is the brother of inertia and the cousin of death. It will not save
you. You have to learn to ignore it completely. You have to make your own
decisions away from fear. This cuts it both ways: it is not a reason to do
anything as much as it should not be a reason not to do anything. Your actions
should be independent of all fear. You are the very thing fear does not know. Motivations
that come from fear have a transient quality. They seem to work out a reaction
in temporal time and get you some movement and leverage in the present tense. Yet,
you are made of eternal stuff. Let that move you and not the fear that tethers
you to only the now and the seemingly immediate. You are eternal, fear is not.