The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown – H.P. Lovecraft
I’ve experienced a lot of death recently. Not at a biblical scale, but a couple people I’ve known fairly well have died, somewhat tragically, in the past few months. It has been three years since my Grandma died. I was fortunate enough to not lose anyone close to me during the pandemic, though I still feel I am living its aftermath. Along with the weight of intense political uncertainty. It adds up.
Some of this manifested as a sense of depression, mainly that things are bad and will not get better. But the feeling that things are bad and that it will last forever is itself a feeling, that of despair, and feelings don’t last forever, because nothing lasts forever. But beneath that sense of frustration and hopelessness is a deep-seated fear. A terror perhaps. I wanted to explore it for myself.
Named must your fear be before banish it you can. – Yoda (Star Wars)
This fear is not an acute terror, like being trapped with a tiger or a poisonous snake – it’s not a jump scare. It’s also not an acute anxiety, like being late for work or an appointment – it’s not really a worry per se. It is an ongoing and pervasive anxiety. Not of the dark, or even the unknown, but something deeper and more specific. Now, I believe avoidance is the root of anxiety. So perhaps I’ve been avoiding a concern and allowing it to escalate and surface after months of daily meditation (and nine months off SSRIs).
One thing I know though, is that it is a fear of something impending in the future. One of my core beliefs is that no one truly knows what the future will bring. There are those who make many guesses and occasionally get it right, and those who respond and take credit as if they knew all along. Fear of the future can be very real, like having a surgery coming up.
I decided to think about the horror films I’ve seen, and the ones that truly seem to resonate. To help identify the fear, as it’s not ghosts or zombies or a contagion. What I settled on was what I consider one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen: The Ring. The idea that if I watch something that seems harmless, like a short video, and then get a call saying I have 7 days to live gives this sense of impending doom that is both vague in the supernatural sense, but concrete in the timeline and inevitability. Similar to the concept of the movie It Follows (which I haven’t seen but know the concept and plot), where there is something slowly chasing me all the time, forever, unless I pass it on to someone else. The other factor here is that of shame – that sharing the fear spreads it to the person I share it with, so empathy keeps me isolated. There is no one powerful enough to turn to to save me from it, unless I believe in an actual active physical God who can step in like an emotionally mature and powerful parent to a young child afraid of monsters under their bed. This was the thing I was seeking to define.
So I wondered what makes The Ring so scary and came up with two words I will use to describe what I have named: relentless dread. This sense of impending doom and losing control of my fate. Imminence without escape.
It is powerlessness and helplessness. A slow erosion of the psyche and exhaustion of my mind. I can prepare but it won’t make a difference. This is a fear of the unknowable – a gradually building, malevolent force. It fills me with endless dread about the future and an alienation caused by not being able to describe and define it. Too large for description and creating an existential fear. While death and politics are scary, a predator always watching and slowly moving in on me indefinitely, relentlessly, forever, is a more concrete and embodied form of this anxiety.
The fear invades and warps my psyche and my relationship with time, myself, and the world. A psychological assault that wears me down, ensuring no moments of peace – creating a constant state of anticipation and anxiety. It is a weight too big to handle alone, but with a force driving isolation. This was much like my first experience watching The Ring, where afterwards my family slept in the living room of my grandpa’s house. I stayed up late, keeping an eye on the TV after everyone else fell asleep, just in case it turned on.
I also believe technology and social media reduce the distance between me and the whole world of politics, chaos, and escalating tension (article on navigating interesting times). And there seems to be no hero, no adults in the room to push back in so many online unregulated spaces that have invaded my head. No parent to comfort the child having a nightmare in the middle of the night. No one to stop Samara from The Ring from creeping into our minds, night after night.
When I was 27, I grew accustomed to more fear
Accumulated 10 times over throughout the years
My newfound life made all of me magnified
How many accolades do I need to block denial?
– Kendrick Lamar, Fear
As an adult, I can remember times when I was comforted by my parents from a deep sense of dread. When I was nine and took a communion wafer at a funeral for my great grandmother, just because I was hungry and curious about what it tasted like. Later, I panicked. I thought if God was real and Catholics were right then I would go to Hell for this. I told my dad and remember him saying that if I did, my great grandmother would argue like hell against it, and I felt better. Knowing I had an ally on my side.
Not being alone changed everything. Fear thrives in isolation but loses power when defined and shared. Here the only thing to fear is truly my own resistance to sharing my fear, and staying trapped in a prison of my own design. I had the ability to let it go the entire time and didn’t know it. There is no Godlike being that can curse me for watching a video like in The Ring, and it was a childlike mind that believed so without seeing the full picture. On the other side of that relentless dread was setting my heavy burden down with a loved one and taking up something that brings me flow, enjoyment, and gratitude for my time warm in the sun.
Uncertainty is not inherently bad, and fear is a normal feeling. It’s part of the human experience. Really, deep down, I’m afraid that if I make the wrong move, I’ll lose everything I’ve worked for and be left starting over, feeling more worn out and powerless when everyone is counting on me. But that is just one side of a perspective. Another side is that even if I lose everything, I trust I’ll adapt and respond. I don’t need to have it all figured out—my future self will navigate it. I can connect to my community whether I am strong or weak. This I can know as well, with more confidence than blind optimism or incomplete logic, like saying ‘that probably won’t happen.’
Sometimes when someone says ‘everything will be okay,’ they just are giving a gift of boundless reassurance and unconditional love and support that we need from time to time. And the resistance to it is a learned behavior that can be unlearned with practice. The universe that is so cold and uncaring also created all life as we know it. And while so much is chaos in the world, there is so much more stillness. I just have to remember to look for it from time to time.
In little ways, when everything stays. Adventure Time
Daeus Jorento 