My son cut his finger, and I retrieved some hydrogen peroxide.  Before I opened the bottle, he screamed and wailed and cradled his finger, convinced it would burn in agony.  As it turns out, it didn’t hurt at all.

“Your fear,” I told him, “was far worse than your pain.”

Fear is a societal obsession.  Numerous billboards in my town depict disturbing, frightened faces with the words, “Driving without insurance is SCARY!”  I began to notice these when my mother called me one afternoon and pleaded with me to turn my car around and return home to search for insurance.  “They will take your car!” she yelled.  “They will leave you standing on the side of the road!  Turn back now!’  She sounded like Chicken Little.  I reminded her that I had no money, and I kept driving, but she sent nearly a dozen messages in the hours that followed with various ideas, none of which made sense.  I just kept thinking, yes, they could take my car.  Then I would face a new challenge, but why spend the intervening time in sheer panic?  I try to avoid reacting to things that have not actually happened.  There are worse fates than walking alongside a road and no longer owning a vehicle.

There is an expectation in our culture that we should be able to live free of any and all threats to well being.  Every time I drive, a message is displayed just above my eyes on the back of my sun visor: “Warning: Death or serious injury may occur.”  Tell me something I don’t know.

Our cultural aversion to vulnerability puts us in a state of constant fear.  For some, living this way becomes worse than death.  Then, paradoxically, the more one can embrace death, the more one finds passion for life.

A person can become suicidal not out of an acceptance of death but out of terror of this deep vulnerability.  One may want to die, because one is afraid of dying, and doing it oneself seems to be the only way to exert control over it.  Suicide becomes a way of heading off destruction at the pass.  Dying physically before dying in every other way, mentally and emotionally, which seems far more gruesome.

When one enters and accepts our deep vulnerability, however, the urge to die disappears.  When one lets go of the need to control death, the urge to die disappears.  I went through this more than a year ago.  The only way out was through.

The rub lies in the fact that suicide is yet another threat to which we are vulnerable, but the more one struggles to avoid it, the more one feeds its root cause.  Then, paradoxically, true healing is found in entering and accepting even the possibility that one might fail and die in this way, when one simply pauses and says, “Yes, that could happen.”  Then, suddenly, it can’t.

Doing what I can in every moment, responding to the best of my ability to this movement of pure being, is bringing me immense joy.  But damn, I am getting a lot of flak for it.  Seeing someone in a dire situation who is not in a panic tends to frustrate people (especially mothers).  It is mighty hard to convince those who love me that I mount monstrous efforts to preserve my family.  I strategize.  I prioritize.  I plow forward, reassess, reorient, and plow forward again.  Continuously, I must reassure them, yes, I am exerting control.  Yes, things are scary.  They are comforted when they believe that I am filled with fear and a need to control.  “Don’t let my serene and peaceful demeanor fool you!” I whisper under my breath, giggling.  I must hide my equanimity.  What a hoot!

I’m going to the art museum to see a garden light show and nourish the supportive friendship of my hibiscus cowboy.  Tomorrow, my advisor will call to discuss the latest draft of my dissertation.  Perhaps I will find a way to graduate after the semester has ended.

A talk by Brene Brown, The Price of Invulnerability: