Fears of Various Shapes and No Shape

And a word on overcoming them

Photo by Joe.

I pray that my fears are never chosen for me, but if my life should prove so privileged, I hope I would still choose to spend it doing things that scare me a little.

𝄂 𝄀 𝄁

Hello. Finger gun to your head: Would you rather your fear have a face?

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a pillowful of nightmares

Fear based on speculation

What might await out there? What will it do to me? Will it be too much to handle?

We humans are not big on uncertainty. When I was new to ultrarunning, the most intimidating thing about it was everything I didn’t know from experience. On race day, my fears lurked—beyond a certain distance, past a familiar level of discomfort, in the darkness of night, in the hadal depths of sleep deprivation. I didn’t fear the distance itself, nor discomfort, darkness, sleepiness; I feared the nameless, amorphous threats that dwelled in the unknown, the fringe, and the unpredictable. As H.P. Lovecraft famously said: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”¹

Now, while perceived absence of information (“the unknown”) is a terrifying weapon in the hands of a skilled horror fiction writer, the real world—as fraught with uncertainty and disquiet as it is—is nevertheless devoid of magical horrors. Cthulhu isn’t likely to call from behind a gooseberry bush on the side of the trail, is what I’m saying. Ultrarunning does have its horror stories (often illustrated with pictures of feet), but as far as fear of the unknown goes, it rarely survives first contact with experience.

So dwindles the finite supply of frightening uncertainties. With each venture outside the familiar, I’ve found calmness where my imagination had cried danger and confidence where there’d been insecurity. It’s one of the best things about this sport. Still, I can’t help but feel a little saddened each time, knowing that I’ll never face that fear for the first time again.

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oh, the places you’ll go (and curse yourself for going)!

Fear based on observation

Sometimes, knowing what’s coming makes it all the more terrifying.

My first 100-mile race wasn’t as scary as I’d imagined, but frankly, I couldn’t have imagined a whole lot of it. And where imagination failed me, there was reality to fill in the blanks, and let me tell you, sometimes demons are scarier when they’re real. In the end, the experience left me with a whole bunch of new things to fret over before my next attempt. (I picked a hell of a first hundred, but that’s for my next post. Suffice it to say, it didn’t feel so much like doing a 100-miler as having it done to me.)

I’m writing this a week removed from my latest bout of fear-facing—as it happens, at that same race. Unknowns were few and far between this time around; returning for the fourth year, I knew what to expect from both the course and myself. Which, in the weeks leading up to the race, I often wished I didn’t.

Unlike fear of the unknown, fears acquired through experience are specific and detailed. They’re idiosyncratic, mine alone—situations, emotions, even places—and alone is how I face them. They don’t lurk on the edges of the perceivable but get right up in my face, real as I am: dark, gnawing thoughts from the deep recesses of my soul; weakness I never knew I could feel; something old in me crying for help in a language not spoken for millennia but understood by all; that bouldery moraine at mile 30.

My imagination couldn’t have forewarned me. These are fears born on the racecourse, impervious to prediction or premonition. I tell you, what they don’t mention in all those flashy ads for ultrarunning you see everywhere is just how much more you should worry about.

I jest, of course—there are no such ads.

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a mountain is both an obstacle and a path

Cross the mountain

I don’t know which type of fear is more powerful or whether either is. I try to appreciate both for what they are: a way forward. Thus, a word on overcoming fear.

The word is “exposure.”

By all means, prepare. Meditate. Read/listen to others’ stories. Panic-buy some new gear. Visualize worst-case scenarios and premeditatio malorum² the crap out of them. Above all else, be safe.

When you decide it’s time, go out and put yourself in the way of your fears. Perhaps not all of them at once or the biggest of them right away. Pick one that prevents you from enjoying a good thing, and steer toward it—the same part of you that seeks to avoid the threat is the one equipped to confront it.

You don’t have to believe the mountain is flat, but let its slopes guide your passage rather than block it. Cross the mountain so that it becomes a part of your journey.

𝄀 𝄁 𝄂

A final thought and a piece of advice: Facing your fears is an admirably courageous act, but there’s always the possibility of it going tremendously sideways. Even if it doesn’t, it can be intense and overwhelming (duh, you’re scared), and you might find it difficult to remain as composed as you would like.

Remember that all you’re trying to do is not become a paragon of badassery, but simply break the behavior of avoidance.

Cross the mountain.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed your time here, please share “Fears of Various Shapes and No Shape” or this newsletter with a friend. Then go play a game the rules of which you don’t understand.

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1. H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature (New York: Dover Publications, 1973). If you prefer a more evocative interpretation, may I offer the folk maxim that the only thing worse than seeing a giant spider is no longer seeing the giant spider.

2. Or futurorum malorum præmeditatio or “premeditation of future evils” or negative visualization—a coping technique based on the idea that life is unfair and we have no real control over anything ever, but at least we can say we saw it coming.