How do we face fear?
That rising tension in the chest, the mind tightening, the clam up of the body, the building resistance to all that is physically present in front of our eyes and the mental swirls that seem to magnify the stress of the moment.
To face our fears. Fear is such a deep seeded emotion, it’s a gift in reality, our senses interpreting the environment we find ourselves in, computing the dangers and risks, allocating resources to the assessment against all previously known instances to ascertain if we are prepared and experienced enough to face this looming situation unfolding unexpectedly in front of us, or, all around us.
As a young boy aged around 10, one of my strongest memories is being on the farm with my cousins, in the days that the game of ‘stacks on’ was a type of fun physical play amongst friends in a rowdy wrestling kind of way.
Until, as the smallest, you find yourself on the bottom of the stack, five or six bigger bodies piled on top of you, that feel like 15 or 16.
Immobilised from the weight, pinned to the ground with everyone layered on your back, ribcage and sternum pressed hard into the floor. Unable to breathe.
The air squashed out of you on the last exhale, the constriction of the mass on top preventing an inhale, not even a gasp or whisper possible to mutter a grievance or desperate plea to get those bodies off.
The tension rising, stuck under this heap, heart racing now as the fear permeates every cell of the body, time seemingly going on forever, mind chattering quickly trying to work out in vain how to escape this oxygen-less predicament, chest crushed so heavily that breathing has been disabled and stopped.
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