from Audre Lorde, “School Note”

My topic for today is fear. What it does to us, and what we can do about it.

It sounds almost trite now to quote Franklin Roosevelt from his first inaugural address, delivered in March, 1933, when our nation was in the throes of the great depression, and things looked bleak indeed. He said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

But that simple message is one worth contemplating. For it is fear in all its forms that keeps us from being what we could be, from doing what we could do. It is fear that whispers to us in our moment of indecision that standing up against injustice is just too risky. It is fear that gives evil the space it needs to thrive. Fear not only limits our potential to do good; it can eat us away from the inside, and it can even destroy us.

I want to read for you a eulogy I wrote over a year ago. Many things have changed in my life since I wrote this. In fact, the writing of it marked a turning point for me, giving me the courage to finally embark upon a long-awaited journey, a journey from which there could be no return. This is called:

The Last Hike
Donna M.

[August, 1997]

It was raining when we awakened in our tents, perched on a scarce flat spot at 11,500 ft in the Chicago Basin, just at the beginning of the treeline below Columbine Pass in the Weminuche Wilderness of southwest Colorado. Even in the unexpected monsoon weather, the hike up to the pass and over had been exhilarating. But with no end to the relentless rain in sight, we huddled together at first light, incognito in our raingear, and decided to hike the last 5 miles down the mountain a day early. Some of the younger hikers in our group, including my son, Jeff, had suffered hypothermia two days before. We had demanded too much from their young bodies climbing up the mountain in the cold rain. I had helped him recover that evening by cocooning the two of us together in my sleeping bag for a couple of hours, then spoon feeding him hot soup for supper. No, another day of cold and damp wouldn't be much fun for the young ones.

We had shuttled cars before the trip, leaving one at the Vallecito trailhead an hour up the road from Durango, so we agreed that three of us would leave early, moving fast to try to catch the first train down from Silverton passing through the Needleton wilderness stop. We could pick up the other car near the train station in Durango and do the reverse shuttle before the larger group arrived, saving them a long wait.

The fast group would be Dr. John (one of the other adults), Jeff, and me. Dr. John always had to start his day with a cup of coffee, so he coaxed his odd, finicky little stove to life, and boiled water to pour through a single cup filter, a personal tradition. I fired up my trusty Peak-1 for a quick dose of hot chocolate, to warm Jeff and me. In a few minutes, we were on the trail with lightened packs, as the others finished breaking camp.

The streams had turned into raging torrents, so crossing the slippery log bridges as the rain continued falling was a challenge. We didn't stop to rig safety lines, yet somehow, none of us fell in. Our pace down the mountain, led by Dr. John, was just shy of a run. Our boots pounded the trail, but the sounds were lost in the thundering crescendo of the water cascading over the rocks in Needle Creek, just to our left.

Raingear can only do so much in a driving rain, and we were soon soaked inside and out, but our pace never slackened. Even seasoned hikers like us forget how fast you can move downhill, compared to uphill, in the thin air. When the ground began to flatten out, we knew the Animas River was close by. As we crossed the pedestrian suspension bridge to the train stop, I looked at my watch. We had been on the trail for two hours and 38 minutes. . We joined a few other bedraggled hikers from an Atlanta church group sitting near the tracks on the other side, waiting for steel-wheeled salvation. They looked to be in pretty bad shape, so we broke out our remaining candy bars and water bottles to share with them. Then the rain stopped. Shortly, we heard a train whistle, and Dr. John and Jeff where whisked away down the mountain while I waited for the rest of the group to arrive.

[July, 2002]

Dr John took his own life last Sunday night, after arising at midnight to go out for a walk. When I first heard the news, I was unable to comprehend. Here was a man who was known and loved by more people than I will ever meet in my lifetime, the doctor who delivered my son into the world, someone who seemed to have everything going his way. I had to try and understand why, and went to see a mutual friend, who was on that same expedition in '97. He told me of a personal crisis that had developed suddenly for Dr. John, and how he was gripped by fear - fear of what other people would think of him. In spite of the efforts of several close friends to reassure and support him, the fear finally overwhelmed him, and he chose to end his life rather than suffer the pain he was feeling.

Pain so all-consuming is hard to understand for most people. But when someone believes their very world is on the verge of collapse, if some very private thing is about to be revealed to everyone, or if they feel like they have let other people down in some way, the pain can be beyond description. Dr. John was not a weak person. Self-esteem is so much more fragile than any of us suspect, until it is ours that is crushed.

I have my own secrets to reveal someday, and I hope I can get through that experience alive.

At the funeral yesterday morning, there were hundreds of people, more than I've ever seen at a funeral before. Perhaps their love was there all the time, but he feared it would falter. Too late to find out, now.

It doesn't really matter what the root of it is; many of us have some secret, or some weakness or flaw that we hide from everyone, worrying about what everyone else would think, were it discovered. From a tragedy like this, we must draw the strength to confront our fears, to forgive ourselves for whatever it is that sets us apart, to love ourselves and allow those others who will, to love us.

***

Up to this time, my fears had caused me pain, but I had not really believed they could kill me. Now, here was the proof. When I finished writing, I promised myself that before another year passed, I would come out of hiding, and the world would know my secret. I would prepare as best I could, then the chips would fall wherever, but living in fear was no longer an option.

I kept my promise to myself and revealed my secrets to the world. On that day, I had a close friend come to stay with me the entire day. I was overcome with anxiety – the proverbial basket-case. She did everything she could think of to keep my mind distracted with other thoughts. We walked for hours through the forest; we drove on back roads I had never seen before; we talked of meaningless things just to keep me from drifting back to thoughts of personal destruction. And when my hardest day was finally over, she hugged me and said, “You know you’ll always have me for a friend.” I guess it’s obvious from my presence here before you that I survived the ordeal.

I’ve thought a good deal about all the ways fear can cripple us in the past few months. Having lived to tell about my own ordeal, and knowing that other people are going through ordeals of their own every day, I became intrigued by what I was seeing everywhere now – people whose lives were dominated by fear of something or other.

During my summer sabbatical, as I was thinking all these thoughts, we rented a copy of Michael Moore’s documentary, Bowling for Columbine. I knew it had won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe as best documentary of 2002, but I didn’t really know what it was about. What it was about is why we Americans kill one another at rates at least an order of magnitude higher than people in any other civilized country.

What I expected was an anti-gun tirade, but that isn't what is served up. In fact, Moore is a lifetime NRA member. He keeps digging deeper, making the point that Canadians own as many guns per capita as Americans, but they still don't kill one another very often. Moore develops the idea that the unique thing about America is our cultural obsession with fearing things - things being our neighbors, the people in the other part of town, people of a different race or religion, people in other countries, etc. His examples are very compelling, and definitely worth thinking about.

As I contemplated this idea of being afraid of other people, some experiences of my own naturally replayed in my head.

In all my years of backpacking in the wilderness, far from civilization, among the wild beasts of the forest, I have never felt a need for any weapon, unless it was DEET mosquito repellant. Having no experience to guide me, I carried a six-inch Buck sheath knife on my very first week-long outing, in spite of the snickers of my companion. I quickly learned it was too heavy and impractical and have carried a much more useful multifunction Swiss army knife ever since. I did carry a filet knife on two trips to the Boundary waters of southern Ontario in recent year, and it would make a very potent weapon, but it was for preparing walleye and bass for dinner, not for gutting other humans.

Friends (including hunters) who don't trek in the wilderness for extended periods like this, who don't like cutting their link completely with a quick return route to civilization, have often asked if I carry a gun with me. I always ask them, "Why would I carry such a heavy, unnecessary, thing with me? It is hard enough carrying essential items, like food, stove, tent, and sleeping bag up and over high mountain passes." Having encountered all sorts of critters on the trail, pikas, marmots, porcupines, moose, elk, and even bears, I have never felt I was in danger. My only fear was that an animal would steal my food or chew my pack straps to pieces for the sweat-salt (which happened once to us by the way) while I was asleep. Both those events are inconveniences which I've learned to prevent by simply thinking ahead, like by hanging my pack from a rope thrown over a long tree limb at night, or better, stretched between two trees. And above timberline, there aren't any big critters out at night. I mean, if I can't out-think the animals, I should probably stay home. Some people have asked if I'm afraid of running into a vicious human, but I have never encountered any but the finest of people in the wilderness. And I've encountered a lot of people out there. Too much work for that rare sort of person e't up with mean-ness, I suppose, considering the easy pickings of urban areas.

Moore makes the point that our news media focus on crime and badness to an extent unlike that in any other country. All you have to do is turn on the TV and watch your local news, and it is always the same. Murder always gets top billing, since we Americans are fascinated with it. We double check our multiple locks every night and install all sorts of alarm systems, fearing that someone will come in and shoot us in our sleep. We avoid "bad" parts of town, don't pick up hitch-hikers, and generally avoid people and places that are a little different.

Many years ago, I was out at night by myself and stopped at a filling station. A guy came up to me and asked if I would give him a ride to where he lived, about a half a mile away. He seemed OK, so I said "Sure, I can do that." We drove to a house in a "bad" part of town (he was a black guy), and he just sat in the car and kept yakking to me, and wanted me to buy some pot from him. I told him I didn't want any, but he kept pushing. He got kind of irritated, and I started getting a little worried. Maybe more than a little worried. I started thinking, "I don't know this guy from Adam, or what his intentions are, and now I've got him in my car. He could pull a gun and steal my car, shoot me, or anything." I looked over at him, trying to maintain my composure, and I said, "Listen man, I just gave you a lift to help you out. I don't want any drugs, and I don't want any trouble. Please don't mess with me. Let's call it a night so I can get on my way." I never unlocked my eyes from his, and after several seconds of silence, he looked away first. He sat there for another very long 5 seconds or so, like he was thinking, then he just opened the door and got out. And I got outa there fast.

I've thought about that little encounter many times over the years. To this day, I have no idea whether I was ever in danger, whether he had any malicious ideas in his head, or whether I was simply projecting all my subconscious fears on a guy who was trying to move some dope sitting in a dark car in an unfamiliar neighborhood. But it made me think about exactly the thing Bowling for Columbine is about, the source of our fears, the darkness that spreads like octopus ink in the ocean of our mind.

Like everything else we learn, our lessons about fear begin at an early age. Perhaps it is a necessary survival skill, but it can dominate our existence if we don’t find a way to temper it.

A couple of months back, as I was making my way through my seemingly endless stack of unread books, I began reading Sister Outsider, a collection of essays by the poet Audre Lorde. She tells the story of her son’s troubles at school, something I suspect most of us can relate to. I certainly can. From her essay:

Man Child
(edited for length)
Audre Lorde
 

When my son Jonathan was eight years old and in the third grade we moved, and he went to a new school where his life was hellish as a new boy on the block. He did not like to play rough games. He did not like to fight. He did not like to stone dogs. And all this marked him early on as an easy target.

When he came in crying one afternoon, I heard from Beth, my daughter, how the corner bullies were making Jonathan wipe their shoes on the way home whenever Beth wasn't there to fight them off. And when I heard that the ringleader was a little boy in Jonathan's class his own size, an interesting and very disturbing thing happened to me.

My fury at my own long ago impotence, and my present pain at his suffering, made me start to forget all that I knew about violence and fear, and blaming the victim, I started to hiss at the weeping child. "The next time you come in here crying …,” and I suddenly caught myself in horror.

This is the way we allow the destruction of our [children] to begin in the name of protection and to ease our own pain. My son get beaten up? I was about to demand that he buy that first lesson in the corruption of power, that might makes right. I could hear myself beginning to perpetuate the age old distortions about what strength and bravery really are.

And no, Jonathan didn't have to fight if he didn't want to, but somehow he did have to feel better about not fighting. An old horror rolled over me of being the fat kid who ran away, terrified of getting her glasses broken.

About that time a very wise woman said to me, "Have you ever told Jonathan that once you used to be afraid, too?"

The idea seemed far out to me at the time, but the next time he came in crying and sweaty from having run away again, I could see that he felt shamed at having failed me, or some image he and I had created in his head of mother/woman. …

And because our society teaches us to think in an either/or mode kill or be killed, dominate or be dominated this meant that he must either surpass or be lacking. I could see the implications of this line of thought.

I sat down on the hallway steps and took Jonathan on my lap and wiped his tears. "Did I ever tell you about how I used to be afraid when I was your age?"

I will never forget the look on that little boy's face as I told him the tale of my glasses and my after school fights. It was a look of relief and total disbelief, all rolled into one.

It is as hard for our children to believe that we are not omnipotent as it is for us to know it, as parents. But that knowledge is necessary as the first step in the reassessment of power as something other than might, age, privilege, or the lack of fear. It is an important step for a boy, whose societal destruction begins when he is forced to believe that he can only be strong if he doesn't feel, or if he wins.

The strongest lesson I can teach my son is the same lesson I teach my daughter: how to be who he wishes to be for himself. And the best way I can do this is to be who I am and hope that he will learn from this not how to be me, which is not possible, but how to be himself. And this means how to move to that voice from within himself, rather than to those raucous, persuasive, or threatening voices from outside, pressuring him to be what the world wants him to be.

And that is hard enough.

Jonathan is learning to find within himself some of the different faces of courage and strength, whatever he chooses to call them.

There are so many ways we can be afraid. But in the end, it is most often about the potential for personal loss – loss of reputation, loss of property, loss of friends or family, loss of good health, or even loss of life. The strange irony is that fear can actually guide us into actions that make our loss much worse than it would have been otherwise.

Just last weekend, I was visiting a friend I only met last December, a person who has overcome so much in her life that I often find myself in awe. We were discussing my doubts and fears about starting a business of my own, since finding work again in my profession in this bad economy seems unlikely. During our lengthy discussion about life, the universe, and everything, she related to me the story of the monkeys and the bananas. I had heard this somewhere before, and it is supposed to be a true recounting of a psychological experiment, but I don't have a citation for it. It goes like this:

A group of monkeys is in a cage, and in the cage is a ladder, with a bunch of bananas at the top of the ladder. Every time a single monkey attempts to climb the ladder, they all get hosed down with water. Before long, when a monkey starts up the ladder, the others pull him down. As the hosings continue, the monkeys get more aggressive and beat the one who attempts to climb. Before long, no monkey is foolish enough to touch the ladder. At this point the hosings cease.

Then, one monkey is removed and replaced by a new monkey. When he starts up the ladder, the others beat him. He soon learns to quit trying to climb the ladder. One by one, the original monkeys are taken out of the cage and replaced by new monkeys who have never been hosed, but each one is severely beaten when they attempt to get the bananas. Eventually, all of the original monkeys who have experienced being hosed down with water are gone, yet none will attempt the ladder.

Such is the power of fear.

And so I asked, “How can we overcome our fears?” How can we gain the perspective we need to keep us from making bad decisions or doubting ourselves at our lowest ebb, when rationality is hiding in the back corners of our mind, and our animal fight-or-flight impulse rears up and demands action?

We need some tools to use to confront our fears, to meet them head-on, and perhaps, to overcome them entirely. For when we can act in spite of our fears, we have achieved that fleeting thing that we all admire in others so much - the genuine act of courage.

As I was reading the Lorde essays and thinking about this, highlighting the passages that speak to me in yellow as I always do, this essay hit me right between the eyes. I colored almost the whole thing yellow. It is called:

The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action
(edited for length)
Audre Lorde
 

I HAVE COME to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect. … The meaning of all that waits upon the fact that I am still alive, and might not have been. Less than two months ago I was told by two doctors, one female and one male, that I would have to have breast surgery, and that there was a 60 to 80 percent chance that the tumor was malignant. Between that telling and the actual surgery, there was a three week period of the agony of an involuntary reorganization of my entire life. The surgery was completed, and the growth was benign.

But within those three weeks, I was forced to look upon myself and my living with a harsh and urgent clarity that has left me still shaken but much stronger. This is a situation faced by many women, by some of you here today. Some of what I experienced during that time has helped elucidate for me much of what I feel concerning the transformation of silence into language and action.

In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light, and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death. But we all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end. Death, on the other hand, is the final silence. And that might be coming quickly, now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said, or had only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone else's words. And I began to recognize a source of power within myself that comes from the knowledge that while it is most desirable not to be afraid, learning to put fear into a perspective gave me great strength.

I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences. And it was the concern and caring of all those women which gave me strength and enabled me to scrutinize the essentials of my living.

The women who sustained me through that period were Black and white, old and young, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual, and we all shared a war against the tyrannies of silence. They all gave me a strength and concern without which I could not have survived intact. Within those weeks of acute fear came the knowledge within the war we are all waging with the forces of death, subtle and otherwise, conscious or not I am not only a casualty, I am also a warrior.

What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am woman, because I am Black, because I am lesbian, because I am myself a Black woman warrior poet doing my work come to ask you, are you doing yours?

And of course I am afraid, because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger. But my daughter, when I told her of our topic and my difficulty with it, said, "Tell them about how you're never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there's always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don't speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside."

In the cause of silence, each of us draws the face of her own fear, fear of contempt, of censure, or some judgment, or recognition, of challenge, of annihilation. But most of all, I think, we fear the visibility without which we cannot truly live. … And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength. Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. We can sit in our corners mute forever while [we] are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid. …

And it is never without fear of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of death. But we have lived through all of those already, in silence, except death. And I remind myself all the time now that if I were to have been born mute, or had maintained an oath of silence my whole life long for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die. It is very good for establishing perspective. …

We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.

The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.

dm 10/26/03