Worry or Wonder?

Prefer to Listen Elsewhere?

Listen on iTunes | Spotify | Google Play | Stitcher

Do me a favour? Would you take a moment and give this show a rating and review in iTunes.

Want More? A Beautiful Anarchy is published 3 out of 4 weeks. On those fourth weeks you can still get your fix through On The Make, my monthly missive about the creative life. Subscribe now and I’ll make sure you don’t miss a thing, and every month I’ll draw the name of one subscribed listener and send them a signed copy of my book, A Beautiful Anarchy.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

On a recent visit to my dentist he took some x-rays of an aching tooth and then calmly announced that I would need "a tricky root canal as soon as possible." On the list of words or thoughts that have terrified me and have had the power to send me into the corner to curl up in the fetal position, that particular combination has been pretty close to the top for most of my adult life. So after a week of anxiety and dread, after being so distracted by the fear that I got nothing at all accomplished, even something so simple as being present and content, I was sitting in the chair of an endodentist, staring down a series of needles and drills and prepared for the worst. What I was not prepared for, the possibility I hadn't even considered, was this: it wasn't that bad.

In my head was a lifetime of people comparing root canals to some of the worst things that could happen to a person. So it was a surprise to me to be sitting there painlessly watching what was going on with something like fascination. I found the whole thing kind of interesting and there was way less of the scraping and the water-boarding that makes me loathe normal dental visits. The worst part of the whole thing was spending 2 hours in the chair and listening to Adele on a loop after the dentist asked his Google device to play an easy listening playlist. Adele? Easy listening? I don't think so. That Adele tends so much towards melancholy in her singing even ruined for me what might otherwise, surprisingly, have been a pleasant root canal. But that was the hardest part. Well, that and the two thousand dollars I had to shell out at the end.

I have feared many things in my life, few of them as worrisome to me as 50 accumulated years of un-founded fears about root canals. I have feared public speaking, and financial ruin. I've feared the ridicule of others and the failure of relationships. And I've feared the rejection of others for both who I am and the work I create. I have feared health diagnoses, and the loss of those closest to me, and the very last thing I want you to take away from this is that everything I have feared has turned out just fine. Some of the things I have feared have been tough, loathsome, things all the way through. But almost none of them were as bad as the fears themselves led me to believe they would be. I have muddled my way through all of them, so far.

In the same way that much of the pleasure we experience from the really positive events in our lives comes more from the anticipation of those experiences, there seems to be a similar thing at play with fear. The worst of the things we go through is often in the dread of them. The fears seem greatest as we walk up to the tunnel, not in the darkness of the tunnel itself. Maybe that's because once we step into the darkness, we come face-to-face with the actual reality of it, our eyes adjust, and our imagination stops doing double-time with that about which we have only been guessing and assuming, and instead starts getting to work on dealing with the thing itself.

There's a gap formed by what we do not know about anything we're going to experience, good or bad. Our imaginations, truly uncomfortable with those gaps, tends to fill them in. In anticipation of something we believe will be good, we fill the gap with really great expectations, making the anticipation really pleasurable, but also sometimes making the event itself—when it finally happens—a little anti-climactic. On the flip side, with things we fear or believe will be negative, we fill the gap created by what we don't actually know with the kinds of horrors that even Hollywood might have a tough time beating. This is a win for our imagination and a testament to the creativity of our brains, but a total fail for any of us whose daily lives, creative or otherwise, is affected by those fears.

What's this got to do with you and your own life of everyday creativity? I'm David duChemin, and this is episode 074 of A Beautiful Anarchy, and I think I've got more questions than answers on this one, but let's talk about it.

Fear is a theme I come back to often on this podcast because I think fear is one of the great barriers to a truly vibrant life, creative or otherwise. Fear clouds our thinking. It holds us back from stepping into the unknown areas in which our best art (and our best lives) are often made, and it extracts a tremendous emotional price.

Fear distracts and distorts, and while truly well-informed fear is necessary and keeps us from doing some truly stupid or harmful things, I think fear too often results in an impulse to play it safe in areas where even the greatest risks won't truly harm or endanger us. And even when we don't play it safe in response to our fears, I wonder what the emotional cost of that fear is, and how it can rob our days of joy. Fear is a distractor from better things, like being present, thinking creatively, daydreaming, and doing your work whole-heartedly.

As often as I have spoken and written about fear, I have often spoken about the need for courage, but that's not where I want to take this particular conversation. I'm wondering if there's a way to re-wire our instincts where the unknown is concerned. I'm wondering if there's a way to respond to that which we do not know in such a way that the fears are disarmed and the need for courage is less constant.

The problem with fear—in the creative life or otherwise—specifically the fear of the unknown, is that everything we do contains an element of the unknown or happens in a context that is unknown. We never know how things are going to turn out, how hard it might be to do our work, or what personal resources we'll need to draw on to do it. Nor, for that matter, do we know if the work will even satisfy us once we're done, or how it will be received by the audience we hope to make that work for. Even when we think we know, we really don't. We assume and fill in the gaps with our hopes (on the better days) and our fears on those days we're leaning to the darker side.

I think our brains need resolution so badly, and are so thoroughly wired to create certainty out of what is uncertain, that our minds just don't really know how to say "I don't know," without immediately responding with either hope or fear, and nothing in between. We jump from "I don't know," to "I'm sure it'll all be OK" on one hand or to "this is going to be a disaster" on the other, as fast as we can, and I'm not sure either instinct is helpful.

"I'm sure it will all be OK" denies the reality that things often do not work out. They are very often not OK. Optimism that is unhinged from the more brutal facts of life leaves us ill-equipped and unprepared when things do go off the rails. The pure optimist doesn't check his parachute or pack a first aid kit, nor does she make a Plan B. My experience of life tells me I need to consider a Plan C, D, and E, and be open to improvising with plans F and G, because life is fluid and when things do work out, when they are, in the end, OK, it's usually because my eyes were wide open, and there was a willingness to not only improvise but to confront what is not OK, and to do something with it. All of that, I think, would be impossible by blindly clinging to the idea that everything will be OK. In a life where everything is always OK, there is little need for creativity.

As far as assumptions go, it's equally unhelpful to go full-Eeyore and jump straight into thinking everything uncertain is going to be a disaster. Pessimism assumes we're just passive players in life and that we have no ability, or the resources, to act upon or engage with things, or to transform that disaster into something meaningful, useful, or hopeful. Perhaps more worryingly, our assumption that things won't go as planned can rob us of the confidence we need to pour ourselves unreservedly into that thing, creating a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy by cutting us off from the boldness we need to do something well.

What if there's a different possible response, one that neither jumps to the assumed certainty of success, nor assumes certain disaster? What if we rebranded what is uncertain and unknown, as mystery and spent some time with it before jumping so quickly into a false sense of certainty, either positive or negative? What if we spent a little more time in that liminal space of not knowing, not having all the information, and being open to things going either way? What if we considered a broader gamut of possibilities, and played in that space a while before jumping to our assumptions. What if our first response to mystery was not "I worry" but "I wonder?"

And what if we did all that against a backdrop of what we do know: that, for example, no matter what happens, we're resilient and resourceful?

We do know we've anticipated things to be bad when in fact they were good and vice versa. We know our assumptions don't always serve us.

We do know we've endured hard things before and found, on the other side of them, that they were not what we imagined.

We do know we've made some some very good things out of some shitty circumstances.

And we should, by this point in our lives, know how to fill the space created by much of what we don't know, with knowledge.

I'm struggling to find the words a little on this one but I found my experience with the root canal enlightening. Here was this thing I had feared for so long, this horrible thing that one day I'd no doubt have to endure—and the emotional price of fear is always so high—and yet, there I was, ready to pay that higher price rather than just Googling it or asking a dentist if it was bad as everyone says. If I'd taken 5 minutes to inform myself, I'd have spent a week doing other things, and feeling other things, rather than distracted by anxiety and fear and getting nothing worthwhile, much less creative, accomplished.

So it's left me wondering: what if we stopped guessing?

What if we were more suspicious of our own certainty about those things about which we can't be certain?

What if we lingered in the unknown a little longer, and became more comfortable with the mysteries?

What if our first response was neither optimism or pessimism—overconfidence or fear—but curiosity and a willingness to peer a little longer into what is unknown before jumping to conclusions that are themselves inevitably wrong or incomplete?

As an instinct or first impulse, what if we replaced "I worry..." with "I wonder..."? Would our next step then be to lean in to circumstances rather than away from them, or to learn as much as we could about that which we fear, and so be better equipped to make something of those circumstances?

When years ago I faced bankruptcy, the fear caused by what I assumed about what I didn't know paralyzed me for months until I spent 10 minutes listening to someone who knew what I did not and let them fill in the gaps with actual information and experience and displaced the fears that had settled into that gap.

The same thing happened when my first marriage fell apart. And, in ways that leave fewer scars, it happens so often with so much in my daily life because the things I don't know will always outnumber the things I do know, so it's probably to my benefit to find a way to respond to that about which I am, in the truest sense of the word, ignorant.

As I get older I'm learning that while I fear the unknown, I'm also drawn to mystery, and the difference between what is unknown and scary and that which I see as mysterious is often only in what I do in my knee-jerk reactions to them. Maybe the more dark tunnels we walk through, the more we realize they are opportunities to face and explore what is unknown, and to respond to them creatively not fearfully. Maybe that's where the courage is most needed. Not just to enter or walk through the tunnel in darkness, but to strike a match and be willing to look at what's there, and to deal with it. Knowing is not always easier. How many times have I felt uneasy about something related to my health and thought about going to see a doctor only to realize I prefer not knowing, that I'd rather not have my worst fears confirmed?

I think creativity is our highest response to what we do not know. It is a leaning into the gaps in our knowledge and an impulse to meet it head on. This is where innovation comes from; as a response to problems and needs honestly explored, not assumptions about them. New directions and creative thinking happen in the space in which we are most open to learning that which we do not know, and so to learn new approaches to lighting a candle in the darker tunnels, rather than being distracted and sidelined by the fears.

Like I said, I've got more questions than answers about this stuff. But isn't that what this episode is all about, the embracing of mystery and looking into what we don't know and maybe, by digging around it awhile, to find a better way through it? Maybe what we should fear are not the circumstances about which we often know so little at first, but rather our assumptions about those things, and our unwillingness to explore the mysteries. Maybe it's not fear so much as an intentionally-nurtured suspicion that our most natural instincts don't always serve our highest needs.

Things are challenging enough without the paralysis, distraction, and high emotional price of fear caused by what we assume lurks behind every shadow cast on the wall by our imaginations in the absence of knowledge, and the presence of mystery.

Thank you so much for joining me, again, and for your patience with me. I took a break in August and, well, I just never came back. Thanks so much for the many emails asking if I was OK. I'm fine and appreciate the concern. I just needed longer than expected to catch my breath. I love doing this podcast, but cards on the table here, I find it tough and now that some of the normal pace of life is returning, this little pandemic project of mine may not be as regular as it once was. But thank you so much for the encouragement and support, and the questions that stir the paint and give me ideas for future episodes.

Our times together each week are a little too one sided to be a real conversation, but if you ever want to change that, you can get me anytime at talkback@aBeautifulAnarchy.com. Thank you again for being here. We'll talk soon. In the mean time, go make something beautiful.

Music in this episode: Acid Jazz (Kevin Macleod) / CC BY-SA 3.0

life creativeDavid DucheminOctober 23, 2021Episode 074